Ayra

Wait, what? Surely you mean that Action skills can only be used in the Action phase, right..?

I got two questions actually. Let's take the basic Linde's ability. "Thunder" / α / Once per turn / [Flip one Bond] Until the end of this turn this unit's attack increases by 10. 1) Can you activate that skill during the enemy turn? This question basically applies to basically all activate-able abilities I guess. I believe the answer's no, but confirmation would be nice! 2) Can you activate this skill midfight? For example, can I use this ability after supports are revealed (so basically, if you are 10 points shy to have a successful attack you could activate the ability) or do you have to activate it before declaring your attack?

Japanese 3DS also.

Well, I got 4 levels with him. Three were 1 stat up, one was 2 stat up before ditching him. It's not statistically significant of course. I can try to get a few more with him once I'm a bit further (So he gets bonus exp for more convenient leveling up). I did get some Dark Mage and Revenant Knight levels on generic and those were pretty good. I'll probably be using Daniella this playthrough, I'll keep you posted if I see anything really odd. Also, for reference sake, I got the Marth and the Lucina from the Fire Emblem IF cards. Both starts at level 10 with no items with two skills (I tried loading them on both my files). The Masked Lucina actually has a mask on her little map icon, but if you equip any head accessory her mask gets removed on her battle model).

The way I see it, people are much more likely to post complaints than praise. This game has sold a whole lot for a strategy game, more sales = more people playing = more complaints. Go to pretty much any popular game board, and you'll constantly see a lot of complaints against it, despite it being a popular and loved game. If that helps you regain your hype at all, I found the game to be utterly amazing personally. I was extremely hyped for this game, and overall it exceeded my expectations. Yes, there's some aspects I don't like much, but overall? It's amazing. I honestly felt bad about buying a Japanese 3DS just for this game and Langrisser Reincarnation. I could afford it, but I felt it was a waste of money. After having played one of the FE Fate paths, I don't feel bad at all with my 3ds purchase anymore. I feel it was worth the cost.

Here's how it went for me. I finished the game, didn't get Yukimura. I reloaded my save after the ending, did a completely random battle (a random one that had a level 20 leader) and he joined right afterward in the castle with a few lines of text. So either you have to clear a certain amount of skirmishes (I didn't do many of them), or you have to beat a level 20 skirmish, or you have to finish the game first..?

Only played Hoshido so far. Gameplay-wise, it's probably my favorite Fire Emblem ever. The new pairup mechanics are very well balanced, and you have to switch between offense and defense. The experience point curve has been rebuilt, so that lower level units catch up much faster, and higher level units can get literally 0 experience: this effectively destroys the "Let me just pick the two best units and have them solo the map" strategy that some used in Awakening. Units cannot both tank and 1-round enemies anymore. You can't nosterafu-tank your way through the game. Every character is very different from a gameplay perspective due to drastically different growths even if they are the same class. The AI is also relatively competent. For example, it usually attacks first with its ninjas and maids to debuff your units and it will move its units to always setup attack formation when it can. It won't ever form guard formations though (Every stage has some, but they are pre-setup at stage start and never happens during the stage itself). Stage variety was also fun and there was some neat stuff, even if its on Hoshido. From a story perspective, my Japanese isn't good enough to understand all the details but I wasn't overly impressed. A lot felt like filler with not that much world building. Still, from a gameplay perspective its very much worth playing (I'm on my 2nd Hoshido playthrough already) and I'll definitively be buying the English version too.

It's basically what is expected, but I just want to report I've been leveling up a Nohr soldier. He mostly got 1 stat level ups and at level 11 his only skill is the one he started with (underdog).

As far as I know: 1) As you mentionned, the "deploy" phase is before the main phase. 2) Pretty sure those are entirely different costs, so yes you could. 3) You can. 4) Never seen this mentioned anywhere, but I'm pretty sure you can't. It revives people, not duplicate them. demonspartanx20: You can go up as many "steps" as you want at once, as long as you have the bonds in play to do so.

The Shuriken debuffs goes away entirely after one turn for both players and enemies. I haven't faced many status staves on Hoshido, but there's one thing I thought was worse than even FE5 berzerk staves... There's one staff that takes one of your characters and teleports them right next to the enemy and the staff has massive range. I've only seen that twice (one in chapter 25, and one in a double-skirmish versus level 20 class-changed enemies). Next to the strategist that has the staff, there's two magic turrets, two upgraded mages, and two berzerkers. Most of my units were being 1-shot by one berzerker already, so this is pretty much instant death, and the strategist can move to grab your unit. I was on Casual and said "eff it, I'll go on anyway" when my Hinoka was grabbed and slaughtered, but I'm not sure how you are even supposed to pass that point on Classic... Not even my general Kamui with an attached character and a full dual guard bar would have survived being grabbed. I suppose I'll have to learn by that point though since I did start an Hard Classic playthrough.

There's some things I was not exactly happy regarding skinship / support / ect, but nothing that makes me upset enough to complain about. This, on the other hand........ That's just..... Yeah. I'm hoping that we get a pies baking support for NA release instead. Anything but this.

I can think of two opportunities to fail on Hoshido Phoenix. 1) Chapter #23 if I remember the number well. Put all units in middle area, wait for Camilla to scorch all of them down to 1HP (I assume it can't kill, didn't try though), spread out in all directions. Pretty sure you could get your entire army killed in one turn that way. 2) Midoriko's paralogue needs you to catch Draj before she leaves the map. I'm not sure if it's an actual game over though if that happens or if you just don't get Midoriko though..?

Enemy weapons can have pluses in their names, yes. Regarding the resources, it's a linear cost. Going from 1 to 2 takes 2 resources. So if you go from 0 to 2, you need 4 resource total (2 to make two +1 weapons, 2 to fusion the level 2). I spent all my money to buy 4 more steel clubs, and to go from 2 to 3 I needed 3 resources (after making another +2 club that is). I have no ideas what's the max. At +3, my weapon got a +1 crit modifier on top of the +2 attack and +1 accuracy, and it looked to be upgradable to +4. However, I'm completely out of money, and even on Hoshido, money is very scarce and the skirmish income is EXTREMELY low when you pay for them. So from a practical sense (ie. If you are unwilling to waste many, many hours), even on Hoshido money is limited. Bronze or Iron weapons would have been cheaper though.

I'm not seeing any recent discussion on forging, so here's my findings for the people interested. To forge a weapon, you need the following three things: 1) A forge in your town. If Hoshido, you can only forge Hoshido weapons. However, you can visit a Nohr castle via internet/streetpass and do one forge there for your Nohr weapons. 2) Some resources that are gatherable in the castle. This is trivial to get if you visit other people castles and is free. The type of resource you need depends on the weapon's type. 3) An identical copy of the weapon you want to forge. Forging does not cost any money (directly). #3 is the big sticking point. What this means is if you want to make a Steel Club +1, you need to have two steel club and one is destroyed. What if you want to make a Steel Club +2? You need either two Steel Club +1, or four regular Steel Club. You can seemingly forge every weapon as long as you have more than one copy of them. However, even with a max level weapon shop, the only weapons with infinite numbers available for sale are the regular weapons from Bronze to Silver. Everything else is available only in limited quantities. If you visit another person's castle, the only weapons available for sale are also Bronze to Silver from their race (So for example you have access in theory to an infinite amount of Silver Lances even on Hoshido), but no other weapons can be purchased there from what I can see. Money is also pretty scarce even on Hoshido, so "infinite amount" is a relative term. What's the benefits from forging? Increased damage and a tiny amount of bonus accuracy. For example, my Steel Club +2 has 14 damage and 72 accuracy, compared to a regular Steel Club's 10 damage and 70 accuracy. That's actually pretty good for a weapon with no drawback (since I'm using that on my Kamui general who can't get doubled anyway) and I do have a few Silver forges (you get a decent quantity of those during the game) for when I really need to kill something. Conclusion? The Blacksmith skill that gives you free weapons might actually be very useful for forging, since you need to use copies to upgrade weapons. If you get enough free iron or steel weapons, you can turn them into pretty useful weapons. I'll try that class out next playthrough for curiosity sake, and it may be a good idea for a Nohr player to pick Oni as their Kamui's class.

Silver weapons don't work as advertised for me. Here's how it seems to work: 1) If you unit is attacked or initiates a fight, they get -2 str/-2 skill. No penality if unit is doing a support attack. 2) The effect is cumulative. If you get into 3 fights in one turn, you'll have -6 str/ -6 skill 3) On your next turn, you get one point of str and skill back. That's it. One point per turn. I first noticed this when I was wondering why my Oboro was doing so little damage with such a lot hit rate now while she was wrecking faces before. Then I checked her status and she was at -15 strength from Silver-inflicted usage.

At least for female Kamui on the Hoshido side, she joins pretty underlevelled and able to do 0 damage to everything except mages (where she does 2 or 3 if lucky). On the positive side, with the 100% dual attack rate and the fact that you get a LOT of experience points if you are behind, its not too hard to make her catch up even with no skirmishes. The explosive shuriken definitively works well with her later on.

Thank you for the summary! I understood most of that during my playthrough, but... not everything, so this is very welcome!

Ahh, thank you! I was wondering what those were. I had seen a few instances of people talking about them on the forum, and since I had received none in my playthrough I thought that maybe they were Nohr-exclusive. I got all my children early (I literally only used the skirmishes to some people to S rank before benching all the people I didn't like). Edit: Regarding the golden coins, they are quite common. You get one coin for about every 4 times you feed Lilith, and if you have Midoriko as a Great Merchant, with her unique bonus she gets about one every two turns. I have 38 coins stashed at endgame and Midoriko never even reached level 15 yet to start using them: you have ten levels of Great Merchant to accumulate them so you should have a nice stockpile when you get the skill. One negative thing though is that they don't stack in your inventory.

Kagerou was literally my MVP in my Hoshido playthrough and she's now my favorite character. She gets stuff done really well. None of my other units had her killing potential: She tanks mages really well, she dodges enemy axes effortlessly with the +5 speed sword, and she can 1-round most enemy units due to her amazing strength (including generals: she even starts with the armor-slaying shuriken). At least for me, she was also durable enough to survive (barely) one hit from the vast majority of enemies: not all my units could say that. Her battle animations are also super-cool and she's really pretty to boot. What more can you ask for?

This to me is the game's greatest strength. You really have to utilise both to be successful in the game and keep switching your setup constantly throughout the fight. What makes me happiest is that this is the way I always played Awakening, but here I get actual bonus for doing so instead of simply doing it for fun/liking to have a lot of units on the battlefield at once.

At astrophys request, here's the list of all the children I have and their class set: Matoi (Hinoka-Subaki): Falcon Warrior, Golden Kite Warrior, Trueblade, Weapon Master, Holy Lancer, Basara Shara (Azura-Tsukuyomi): Basara, Exorcist, Shura, Blacksmith, Falcon Warrior, Golden Kite Warrior Sophie (Sakura-Silas): Paladin, Great Knight, Hero, Bow Knight, Exorcist, War Priestess Midoriko (Hana-Kaze): Great Merchant, Trueblade, Weaponmaster, Elite Ninja, Puppetmaster (Note: She's the slowest unit on my team despite her parents from recruitment to endgame, so I'm questioning stat inheritance a bit) Mitama (Setsuna-Asuna): War Priestess, Exorcist, Golden Kite Warrior, Sniper, Puppetmaster, Great Merchant Kinu (Oboro-Nishiki): Kitsune, Holy Lancer, Basara, Exorcist Shigure (Aqua-Tsukuyomi): (He's not promoted) Pegasus Warrior, Rod Knight, Spellcaster

I finished the Hoshido campaign but I never got Yukimura. I don't have all the children and I didn't do "Castle Defense #3" (Just popped at like chapter 26), so either of those may be related.

When your magic shop gets to gold (I think around chapter 21 is when you can do so), you can buy infinite master seals, but not before (it's in limited quantities). However, you can go to other people castles and buy a seal there so if you have internet access and don't mind "gaming the system", you can have your infinite amount of seals at any time.

Oops... Just double-checked and I'm wrong on one point :( They didn't get skills at 25... I thought Felicia got Tome Breaker at 25 but she probably had it before when comparing with Joker's skills... Azure did get a skill at 25 and she is missing one (she's not 35 yet) still. They do level up to level 40 however (My Felicia is level 31 and still has poor stats comparatively), and they get exp like unpromoted units so they aren't normal maids either. By the way, I never used Takumi or Saizou and I compared with my stats for them and they are spot-on with yours. Every other character has gained at least one level unfortunately..

I'm glad that the game is selling well! I just finished the Hoshido path, and it's EXCELLENT from a gameplay perspective, so it's well deserving of the good sales.