Ranulfo

Whoops. Thanks for noticing haha 😛

Black Eagles 1. Dorothea. From the moment I first laid eyes on her I knew she would be one of my favorite characters. From her ever famous hat to her hair, her expression and sassy pose. She cares about her girlfriends like Ingrid. And she's also a mage and a singer! If I were a student in this academy I just know we'd be best friends. 2. Caspar. I gotta be honest, I wasn't completely sold on Caspar at the beginning. He looked kinda weird in the earlier trailers to me. But after we got to see his hi-res portrait, know about his personality and hear his voice I fell in love with him. What a sweetheart. Truly my trash son. He also looks pretty great post-timeskip, although I'll miss him being a shorty. I hope I can pair him up with Linhardt. 3. Edelgard. I was scared she would just be another Lucina blandina but so far she seems really awesome. Bonus points for losing the obviously made-to-be-popular original design and going for that awesome empress look after the timeskip. I love my powerful empress. 4.Linhardt. Just like Caspar, I definitely wasn't sold on him originally besides reciting the obvious meme for the first few days. Look at that hairstyle. Yikes. But after learning he suffers from sleepy bitch disease, his hyperfixation on crests and his bromance with Caspar he quickly rose on the ranks. Here's hoping for a glow up worthy of Lyn's great-grandson. 5. Bernadetta. I'm usually really into shy anime girls (see Marianne) but Bernie didn't really do it for me. I'm not a fan of either her pre or post-timeskip appearance and I'm still kinda worried about her "hobbies" even if it's probably just gonna be cooking or monk-watching. I loved Nina for her better moments but we don't need another one. I'm open to her personality surprising me though! 6. Petra. The echoes to Athena were kinda worrying to me. Foreign for the sake of being foreign is a bit of a pet peeve for me, even if I quite liked Gregor. She's definitely a step-up from those type of characters though, given we actually learn what country she's from and why she's here. Keep learning that language, girl. I lowkey hope she has a similar relationship with Edelgard as Nephenee has with Calill. If after the timeskip she has gained more confidence in her speech and herself she's 100% gonna go up a few ranks. 7. Ferdinand. I actually had Hubert here and spent a good 10 minutes trying to remember who was left from the Black Eagles. So yeah, he's kinda forgettable to me. He's not in last because of that one confession booth note about wanting to overthrow the current emperor and inherit the throne instead of Edelgard... I'm all for post timeskip full rebel leader Ferdinand. 8. Hubert. He ugly. It's like they took Iago and Izuka and had them birth a weird magic child. "Loyal to Lord" is also all we've got for him atm, so unless he gets developed nicely like Soren I don't anticipate me liking him. Blue Lions 1. Sylvain. "Womanizer" characters have always been hit-or-miss for me, and I was actually a bit disappointed when he turned out to be a member of that archetype, but I still love his design so much (redheads are my weakness), and learning about his backstory with his house and brother as well as being childhood friends with Dimitri, Felix and Ingrid definitely revitalized my interest for him. Hopefully he has more going for him than characters like Alec, Sain, Virion or Inigo. 2. Ashe. Once again, loved his design since day one. I love soft boys with pastel hair. His involvement with the leader of what's probably one of the first rebellions against the church promises to be interesting as well. Can't wait to see how he develops with the story. 3. Mercedes. A big sister character done right after Fates?! Sign me up! Mercedes seems so nice and sweet while also having an intriguing and mysterious backstory. I can't wait to learn more about her and her previous status in Adrestia. 4. Annette. The few images we had of her before her profile reveal definitely didn't do her justice. She's so cute! I love her voice and portrait pose too. I want to learn more about her past in the magic academy and how a niece ended up inheriting the crest of her family... Intriguing. 5. Ingrid. I actually liked Ingrid a bit more before we knew a lot about her. I like her dream to become a knight worthy of respect and I'm really hoping she doesn't end up relegated as the "female childhood friend" to Dimitri, Felix and Sylvain. I want her to be more than just an equalizer for her male friends! 6. Felix. He would probably be lower if it weren't for the fact he's literally the only known playable character with a major crest other than Byleth. He seems a bit like the generic lone edgy swordsman we get in basically every game. Some of them hit it off with me, some don't. Let's see if his involvement is enough to make him part of the bunch I love! 7. Dedue. Another "I'm loyal to my lord" and that's it kinda character. I have more hope for Dedue than I do for Hubert though. He seems like he could be a scary looking giant that's actually a sweetheart, and I'm a sucker for that archetype. He has the potential to rise up. Please don't actually have the averages we saw in the King of Beast videos 8. Dimitri. The Blue Lions is my favorite house, but Dimitri is definitely my least favorite lord. His personality was the only thing he had going for him, given his horrible initial design, and even though they kinda fixed the hair post-timeskip they made him edgy and scary... I don't like that too much. Of course, it can all change once we see what makes him reach those extremes, but right now he's a combination of everything I don't like in a lord. Golden Deer 1. Marianne. Soft color palette, blue hair, shy personality, animal lover, mysterious backstory and crest, possible relationship with the Adrestian Empire... What's not to love? Marianne hits all the right buttons for me. She definitely seems like an important plot character taken straight from Genealogy, and I'm totally down for that. I hope she's worth the hype. 2. Claude. My favorite lord of the three both pre and post timeskip. He's so dapper and he fights for his friends. I hope I'm not forced to kill him since I won't be choosing his house at first, but he'll definitely be my boy for the second playthrough. Let's see how "cunning and untrustworthy" he really is. love the facial fair king 3. Raphael. What an ABSOLUTE UNIT. A good, BIG boy. A nice optimistic soft guy who likes to eat and doesn't like to study and whose shirt is always in danger of bursting open. I love him. 4. Lysithea. She definitely has potential to be a cool character if she doesn't end up being a female Rickeyato. I like a studious, magically inclined woman, so let's see if she can mature out of her appearance and become a respectable warlock. 5. Hilda. The pink-on-pink is a bit much for me, and her post timeskip appearance is hit-or-miss, but I do enjoy a cute, feminine woman wielding a huge ass axe as her main weapon. I'm also very interested in the parallels between her and Sylvain. She also inherited a crest over her older brother, but they don't have a bad relationship and he (seemingly?) hasn't been disowned and banished because of it. I really want to see what becomes of her backstory. 6. Leonie. I like the mercenary background; her, Byleth and Jeralt bring me back to the good old Greil Mercenaries. She looks and acts a bit bland so far but I'm looking forward to see her grow as the war advances. 7. Lorenz. At least he has an interesting hair color? Meme man really needs to pay a better hair stylist, but he does give me hope that he'll be the awful womanizer of the game and Sylvain instead will just be a horny teenager who'll grow out of it. Digging the glow up after the five years though. 8. Ignatz. Personality-wise, I like him! He seems sweet... but not terribly interesting, sadly. That combined with the worst hair in the entire army, big ass nerd glasses and baby voice brought him down here. I anticipate him to be blandy mcbland. But if he proves me wrong, becomes incredibly interesting and gets a Caspar style big boi apperance change post timeskip I'm fully ready to eat my words and love this man.

Going by twitter reveal engagement it actually looks like Mercedes and Marianne are more popular than Ingrid and Lysithea respectively. I didn't bother going back to look at Edelgard because that's a given. That's only a small portion of the fandom but still it's worth noting. We'll probably get a Japan only popularity poll as always, and then we'll know which girls will get all the merchandise and Heroes alts

I was originally going to play F!Byleth and romance Sylvain (teaching Blue Lions) but after talking to my partner who's going to be playing a Fire Emblem game with me for the first time we've decided we really want to try out whatever gay option there is. I never gave Niles a chance anyway, so let's see if they can redeem themselves. For the Black Eagles I was gonna do Dorothea but seeing as I probably won't get to experience the Sylvain romance, I'll just recruit him in this playthrough and hook up! Finally for the Golden Deer it's gotta be Marianne. She has my favorite female design, just above previous queen Dorothea. If the game is good enough I'll play more for sure, but this is all I have planned for now.

Oh well, it's all cleared up now! I haven't been this hyped for a long time. I'm definitely looking forward to see what kind of interactions and dialogues the characters I recruit to my army from other houses will have when fighting against those I didn't sway to my side... Definitely expecting something on the level of Radiant Dawn obscure convos. Please don't be like Fates, especially Revelations. I made Sakura and Takumi attack Ryoma just to get no reaction from him at all, among other things 😞

https://serenesforest.net/2019/05/29/three-houses-famitsu-third-article-part-2-2-weekend-activities-new-character-details/ Here it is, search for "Venture". The way both Vincent and the famitsu article write it, it definitely seems like we will ALWAYS have an available skirmish for no cost in normal mode. I honestly didn't know motivation for students worked the same way in this game as in Thracia and Shadows of Valentia. I thought it only mattered for tutoring... Correct me if I'm wrong. As for the Sword of the Creator, surely you'd save it for more important battles and use iron weapons and such. Especially if you wanna level up ranks for weapons other than swords.

Oh sorry, I'm not a native English speaker so I assumed by typo you meant "as written in the article" or something like that 😛

Magic and faith? They might've confused Edelgard with fellow white haired lady Lysithea... 🤔

I can't see them straight up killing off someone you've been pouring your resources into AND can recruit into other houses that easily either. Just like with Kaze/Pelleas there has to be a way to save her, or there will be a "substitute" character that inherits her stats and weapon ranks upon her departure, like Kratos and Zelos in Tales of Symphonia. Someone you've build support with but never ended up recruiting? Sure. But someone you've already built, customized and used for 12+ story chapters and paralogues? Nah. I'm guessing her source or Thani herself are working with incomplete information or withholding some of it for their own security/to stir up conversation about Lysithea 😛 As you said, she might just die VERY early on after the timeskip if she's not in your house, possibly the very first story chapter, and that's why the source picked up on that. Then again Thani has said that Marianne should be playable until the very end of the game so it seems now they know info about the endgame. I'd be curious to know if the people that privately talked to her more recently also asked about Lysithea and the response was still "she dies, yeah" or "can't say"...

In normal mode you'll be able to grind skirmishes that cost no gauge to make your Byleth op and recruit everyone. For harder difficulties there will likely be DLC for that same purpose, just now you have to pay for it 😛 There's probably going to be an optimal way to build your Byleth to recruit most students in the time given, just like it's feasable in Persona to maximise all Social Links if you micro-manage every single day of the game, but whether it's most students or ALL students depends on the actual weapon and stat level Byleth needs to achieve.

My guess is that there will be a story chapter in which Lysithea turns into a black beast or something akin to that that from those alleged crest experiments and you have to kill her/fight her and she dies in the scene after the fight. However, if you're part of the Golden Deers or you recruit her into another house there will be a way to save her, maybe in the form of an extra dialogue option (think Pelleas from Radiant Dawn) or a paralogue. Pretty sure we'll get similar situations for other students, we just got Lysithea's relevant info because Thanibomb immediately took a liking to her.

I hope Ryoma makes it far enough that IS believes he's popular enough to get actual seasonal variants, even if it's because we're memeing. Summer Lobster please? Anyway I kinda missed every multiplier except one so I only managed to sneak into the first 30k. Hopefully I can use these 1000 unused flags to get some nice feathers next two rounds. I have NYAzura too so I get to support someone I own for the final round either way and also married her and Ryoma first time playing Fates so this is bittersweet

I keep reading NYAzura as Nyazura and can't help but imagine her in Halloween Sakura's outfit meowing lmao

After around 250 orbs on this, more or less the same as last legendary banner, I got Amelia, Gunnthrá and Ryoma. Three characters characters compared to the seven from back then is pretty disappointing, but I guess I did get NYAzura pretty fast AND Amelia and Gunnthrá were the two I wanted the most alongside Bride Lyn. Then again, getting Gunnthrá means green will become a less desirable color for next legendary. And I was looking forward to trying for Summer Xander and Summer Elise... :/

Can't wait to get Archer Corrin, or even better, Merric while trying for Azura. And of course everyone will still have her in arena. Sorry I'm still salty about not getting any of the green dancers back when Performing Arts happened

I kind of expected an explosion of cool limited content at the end of the year, but I was also expecting IS to give us some kind of christmas gift/event to ease us into it? I guess I'm too naïve lol

Yep, just edited. Sad...

well at least they look cute

Ugh, Takumi... If the other one really is Azura then I guess the remaining units will be Male Corrin and Hinoka, in which case I will be interested in no one. In hindsight that should be good since I get to spend my orbs on something else, but I like to get at least one unit from every seasonal event as a memento. Give me Sakura or Ryoma at the very least, IS, please, or I'll just feel like I'm throwing orbs into the trash.

Hoping Gunnthrá is free, since she would be perfect to complete my third horse team... If she isn't then I guess I'll try for her and an Amelia with better IVs than my current one. I swear if I get Chrunny... I'm also interested in colorless since I lack Candlyn and Innes. But then I might get spooked by Elise... Red has Sigurd and Blue has Buncina that I'm missing, but pulling for just one unit per color is asking to be disappointed. All in all, every color has someone I'd just loathe getting. ... REALLY hoping Gunnthrá is free so I can save my orbs for new years fundoshi ryoma lmao in my dreams

Add a Brave Lyn to this. Why does luck favor the people who don't care about the characters at all ;_;