Lynsanity

What's been nice about the past 2 Fire Emblem games is actually how much of the storytelling happens outside of supports. In Echoes, you get characters popping up in every town and shrine and reflecting on what's been going on, their whereabouts, other characters etc. You even get some character arcs this way, like Tobin basically airs his grievances towards Alm near the end, Gray thinks back to Ram village when they're in Rigel and gets some class consciousness. It's very organic and feels similar to the base conversations in Tellius. Then Three Houses of course adds mountains of non-support dialogue because everyone has something to say every chapter. That came with some good and bad (I realized as Raphael talked about food for the 11th time), but again it's a lived-in world and the player gets to choose how much of this characterization they see. Of course, both these games still had plenty of support convos too. I don't think they'll ever go away as they're a franchise staple at this point. But more writing in addition to supports is something I can definitely get behind. If Tellius games do get remade, I'd love a free-roaming base exploration mode similar to Garreg Mach, but not rooted in one spot this time.

Reading this thread has really made me realise I enjoy gameplay systems far moreso than things like encounter designs, if we're talking overall gameplay. Especially seeing people build up Conquest's "gameplay" so much while tearing down Birthright's. They're... mostly the same gameplay? Progression and strategy felt pretty similar to me when playing them - I did Birthright first, and then Conquest, and it didn't distinguish itself that much in my mind. Are different map objectives really all we care about here? On that note, Echoes had some of my favourite gameplay in the series, and it's my pick for best 3DS game. I love the FFT style abilities learned from weapon EXP, that really made me enthusiastic to kit out my units. I loved the combat arts and magic all being tied to HP, it made me use the powerful ones more instead of saving things for later. Difficulty wise it felt balanced around you popping things Invoke in a lot of chapters, which would be absolutely OP in other Fire Emblems. I loved the progression of the 3-tiered promotes.The dungeon crawling and point-and-click town segments are also part of the Gameplay, and I liked the variety they offered. None of those really have anything to do with the maps, and the maps never got in the way of them. There are big and bland maps for sure, but you're mostly fighting cavalry and teleporting witches on them, so those battles always resolved quickly for me. One thing I thought would be a slog was the dungeon segments - breaking up dungeon exploration with top down SRPG encounters is such a clunky idea that has no right to work. And yet... those battle maps are all really small, and also resolve quickly, so the dungeons played far smoother than I expected. The only part of the game that actually made me want to throw my 3DS was Nuibaba's Abode, and that's truly one of a kind.

We had a "things you didn't realize until way too late in the game" thread earlier, and what came up a ton was combat arts needing to be equipped. For both combat arts and abilities, it should absolutely be a prompt whenever a fully equipped unit learns a new one, in combat or in lessons. Imagine if picking up an item just automatically sent it to the convoy without letting you choose. Abilities are even more permanent and important than that. In fact, I don't see why you're limited to 3 combat arts in the first place. There's no limit to the number of spells a magic unit can have, so why do physical attackers need to choose only 3 combat arts? They should basically just be like "spells" for the weapon types you have equipped. As for items, I wish storing, repairing, and buying/selling items could be done from the same screen. It's annoying having to go into inventory to see what superfluous items units picked up, select a unit, then see things that need to be repaired or replaced, exit out, go to Marketplace, select a shop, select a unit again, do the relevant thing, exit back to Marketplace, etc... for every unit you need to manage.

I liked both Bernadetta's and Marianne's characters and really didn't find them that different in quality. I felt sympathy and laughed in equal measure for both of them. Yes Bernie goes more over the top in her reactions, and the music and voice acting choices are different. But the substance of what the characters say, other characters' reactions to them, and their backstories all seemed consistent to me, and I had Bernie recruited in a Golden Deer run so I was seeing them in the closest contrast possible. Characters don't have to be 100% serious or 100% comedic, and revealing a tragic backstory doesn't mean their behaviour or the world's reaction to them is suddenly going to flip. They're maybe not textbook character arcs, but the game did a good job with the formula of character gimmick + serious backstory for most of its cast. It's a videogame that emphasizes player freedom and has 30+ characters, so I thought it did well given that much.

Hard to know what your friend is doing wrong so early without seeing him play. My guess would be it's something simple like not utilizing magic + range enough against high defense, or having the wrong weapons equipped. Some of your lower strength units with no magic probably need to rely a bit more on gambits and combat arts early on, but I don't think those are even in play by Chapter 2. Maybe he's expecting all his units to 1v1 enemies well without baiting them and then ganging up. I guess the first chapter where you control only the house leaders could lead you to that impression.

I’m only at B with them but I love Claude and Leonie together. Just out in the woods being blasphemous.

I’ve also wondered what the state of plumbing technology is in this fantasy setting. Is there running water? Showers? Where would the monastery draw water from? I want a water tower with rumours swirling around it that students make out or died up there.

One of my favourite little writing touches in the game so far is how even the tutorials are given characterization, because it’s usually a house leader or Sothis explaining things to you. And after a bunch of info screens with her breaking down Demonic Beast mechanics, there’s a tutorial heading that’s just “How do you know all this, anyway?” And she responds with something like “What?? Focus on the task at hand!” A nice little crossover of game UI and characters.

How much investment do the hidden talents require? Is it true that only tutoring affects unlocking them, not battle experience etc?

Has it been confirmed that literally only tutoring supplies the points needed for budding talents? I.e. weekly tasks, monastery activities and battle experience don’t build towards them?

I only on-accident spoiled myself for one of the route endings. I was clicking spoiler tags on reddit without paying much attention to the messages before them, because I forgot the game's cutscenes had just been ripped so of course people were discussing the endings. I blame spoiler blocks for feeling too natural to click. Reading a thread becomes like a clicker game and then I fall into the rhythm of it I guess.

I don't even care about Linhardt but he got the best CG, imo. It's so chill and true to his character. It would honestly make a good desktop background.

This honestly sounds like a blast. Kind of like a Nuzlocke run for Fire Emblem. Protip if you don't own d4s, you can just roll a d6 to pick your house, with 2 numbers assigned to each house. And for a d8 you could... flip a coin 3 times... and assign a master class... to each discrete sequence of flips... or just use random.org lol

Another totally non-stat related takeaway from this is several confirmed growth spurts - as in growth in height. Including Caspar and Ashe, but not Ignatz. Although I'm disappointed to see

Is a story spoiler? Or do those numbers only appear in this datamine?

I don’t think it’s all a sameface problem, like Ingrid and Mercedes do have distinct eye shapes that they retain post-timeskip. My only real issue is it looks like they stretched out Annette’s features and scaled back her eyes to end up looking closer to the other two, at least from the weird angle in her portrait. Not everyone loses babyface in their 20s!

Maybe there’s still hope that one of the girls with longer hair will go more butch after the time skip. Mercedes?

I can’t believe Ferdinand goes full Party in the Back. I like Leonie’s new look but RIP my dreams of her sporting a Jeralt undercut post-timeskip

Alright, I'm ok with this.

Aw shhhh— I guess that explains why she’s so intense about studying and never sleeping and maximizing her time.

Maybe it's just because I don't particularly care about recruiting Hubert, Dedue, or Hilda, but I worry this will harm the storytelling a bit. It feels very "videogamey" for you to be able to recruit literally any student besides the lords. And it makes the status of these 3 feel less special. Hopefully they will still get written to have cool/sad moments being chapter bosses or something post-timeskip, if you don't recruit them, but if you do their roles or chapters will be replaced in some way.

Same but with Splatoon 2. It's nice to have a fast-paced competitive PVP game to alternate with a solo strategy one. Unfortunately for me they scheduled the final Splatfest literally this weekend, just before the launch of Three Houses. -_-

Well that just doesn’t make sense. Why would a class be reverse Byleth-locked? Like available to literally everyone else?

This one unfortunately, where it completely wastes the Pokemon IP on rote, procedurally generated, +50 floor dungeons. Meanwhile SoV was the best Fire Emblem game to date, and this comment is to illustrate that video game assessments are like 90% subjective.

I was thinking about this earlier trying to come up with reasons why neither male lord is romanceable by M!Byleth. And I think it probably doesn't help that nobody takes lesbian relationships seriously, while any male-on-male relationship means the men involved are Gay, forever and unquestionably. Literally IS might have worried that making Claude or Dimitri bi would "ruin" them for their straight fans, or cast some shadow on their characters that wasn't intended. And that's why only risk-free weirdos got that option on the male side, whereas every key female character in the game is bi like it's going out of style. I think there's biphobia and lesbiphobia to go around here.