Icy Toast

^I think "It's unusual!" would be closer to the intended meaning here.

I have a digital copy and it still happens, but only occasionally and the delay is generally very small. It's not nearly as noticable as it was in the Treehouse demo, so don't worry about it too much. To be honest I'm more bothered by how the frame rate tends to drop during 2 on 2 battles if the 3D switch is on. (It's like the gen 6 Pokémon games, but a bit less noticable, I guess.)

I haven't played the third route yet, but based on my experiences with the other two, I share your disappointment, Thane. I largely agree with the points you've already brought up, except perhaps for the second one. I don't think the royal siblings were all that bad, to be honest, and I feel that it's a bit unfair to compare them to lords in previous games, since that's not really the kind of position they're in. That being said, I can't help but agree with the 'why so many'-sentiment. There's another aspect of the story that really disappointed me, but I'm having trouble putting it into words. I guess one way to put it would be to say that if a good story is like a scenic trail walk, this one feels like we're being taken on a strictly controlled guided tour through an exhibition of cardboard stage props. No touching, or they might fall over. No diverting from the tour route, or you might accidentally find out about how they never bothered to paint the backside of these things. No time for questions, we're on a tight schedule. Many of the places and people in the game just seem to pop into existance right before our protagonist arrives, and when we move on to the next chapter they just seem to disappear into thin air. Most of the smaller countries and their allegiances aren't mentioned until we get there, and nothing ever happens to them again after we've left. And I guess that would be totally fine (albeit not exactly the height of compelling storytelling) if this was just a story about Kamui's personal journey, but apparently this is a story about a horrible war between Nohr and Hoshido that affects the entire continent, and this Kamui person is, for whatever reason, actually leading an army that plays a decisive role in this war. He's a terribly incompetent commander by the way, relying on others to tell him what country he's led his army into this time, but that's a different problem altogether. But the thing is, the game doesn't really tell me much at all about the state of this war and its effects on the world. The choice in chapter 6 tells me the Hoshido path is about 'defending Hoshido', but after just two chapters in Hoshido we basically call it a day as far as defending our homeland goes and leave the country to search blindly for our dear onii-sama. What will happen to Hoshido (which has just lost its ruler and its magical protection barrier thing) while the royal kids and their troops are gone even though we've apparently got Nohrian troops encroaching on our territory? Noone seems to care. Does that mean the initial attack has been successfully repelled? Or are we simply leaving the rest up to Yukimura? All the game really tells us is that fighting took place near the border, but the outcome of this battle apparently isn't worth discussing. Onii-sama's whereabouts are simply too important, we don't have time to care about the safety of our people. The rest of the story is no different. What will Fuuma - a hostile state right next to our borders, mind you - do after we've killed its ruler early on in the Hoshido route? Doesn't it seem sort of likely that they're going to start open warfare on Hoshido now that everyone knows whose side they are on? Or were the troops we defeated in that forest all they had? How big is this Fuuma place anyway? Noone seems to care. The characters don't care, the writers don't care, and presumably I'm not supposed to care either. Oh, and by the way, I seem to remember there being this Nohrian army in the harbour when we boarded our ship for Amusia after this chapter, probably waiting for their chance to march into Hoshido - I honestly can't be sure because the game never even tells me where this harbour was or even where the Hoshidan border is - but of course noone seems to be bothered by that in the slightest. And you know what, I can't really blame them. Hardly anything ever happens in the rest of the world when Kamui isn't looking. But as a reader I can't help but wonder what all of these things mean in the grand scheme of the war, and the fact that the characters never ask any of these questions and just rush ahead to the next under-developed plot point only ends up making me feel disconnected from their story. The result is (for me personally at least) easily the most uninteresting war in the most uninteresting world ever conceived in any FE game. It doesn't feel like there's substance to any of it. It doesn't feel like an actual world, it's way too obvious that it's all just a collection of disposable stage settings for the Heroic Tale of Noble Lord/Lady Kamui and His/Her Many Brothers and Sisters. So why should I care even a little bit about what happens to any of the continent of... ...come to think of it, does this continent even have a name? It's a shame really, since a lot of this could've been fixed (or at least improved) simply by adding some decent world map narration to flesh out the countries/duchies/clans/territories and their political and military situations or some basic background on their (recent) history, like previous games in the series would have done.

No, it's not possible to choose the third path before choosing Nohr or Hoshido first, even in the digital version. The "Pave a new future" menu only opens up in the digital version after you've made your choice upon reaching chapter 6 for the first time. There's no way to download the third path without that menu, and until you've purchased and downloaded it it simply won't show up as one of the chapter 6 choices. (Just to be clear, when I reached the choice point for the first time in my digital copy of the game the third route hadn't been released yet, and I haven't actually tried resetting my game to see if it would be any different now, but considering that there hasn't been a general version update for the game the base data of the digital version shouldn't be any different from before the 3rd path release.)

To be honest I never really noticed his outfit because of the angled talking portrait, but now that I've googled his amie art I do think it looks pretty ridiculous. With the amount of fanservice going on in the rest of the game it isn't really the skimpiness that bothers me though, it's more of a 'why on earth would he dress like this!?' kind of thing. It's right up there with the female General armor. (I guess I can appreciate it for making me laugh though.)

炎の紋章 (honō no monshō)

It wouldn't be so bad if it was just other characters telling us that Takumi is wrong for disliking the avatar. But the reality is a lot worse than that. It isn't just individual characters, it's the very narrative of the Nohr route that seems to tell us that Takumi's attitude towards Kamui is wrong. His dislike of Kamui is treated as a source of dramatic dissonance that MUST be resolved for the story to reach its conclusion, and in a rather heavy-handed way at that. (Nohr spoilers from this point onwards)

It's true that the lake only remains unfrozen for 1 turn, and you can only use it twice, but that doesn't mean it's pointless! Unfreezing the lake will stop any units from moving onto lake tiles, and any units who were standing on top of the lake when you used DV will be unable to move until the next turn. It can be pointless or insanely powerful depending on when and how you decide to use it. I thought it was a very clever way to spice up a map that was already pretty great without it. It's hell, but in a really good way. It's one of the most satisfying chapters in the game (imo)!

Added you! Mine is 3 3 0 8 - 5 5 7 9 - 7 6 3 6. My team isn't done yet either, but feel free to send me a PM when you feel like trying a battle! (Or just add me for easy access to Toast Castle) As Vincent said we simply don't know this until the western version of the game is released. When the game shows your friend list for friend battles it also shows friends from different regions though, so it's entirely possible (but by no means guaranteed) that it will function across different regions. The limited online battle feature should undo the effect of eternal seals, so I assume you won't encounter the "lv 35-45" teams you were describing earlier if you queue up for a limited battle. That being said, you could still find yourself pitted against 20/20 teams, so you might want to wait until you've finished the main game before you try random battles. The thing about the lower level player choosing was my initial assumption, but I think that might have been incorect. I'm not sure how exactly this works though, and it's rather difficult to find out because (unlike in friend battles or local battles) there's no way to tell what a random opponent is seeing and doing. As a result, I'm not sure whether the handicap feature is only active if both players agree to it or if one player activating it is enough. Not really sure about its effects either, so it might not be sufficient to off-set the difference between an early game team and a late game team. (It should be easy to find out by activating it in friend battles with uneven teams, but I personally just haven't tried it yet because I'm busy with the main game, and I haven't heard from anyone else who has.) I don't know of any. But I guess that's not too surprising considering that there's probably no more than a handful of people who own both the game and the tools to properly record footage from a 3DS.

In the title screen menu there should be a sub-menu called "新たな未来を拓く". It shows you three options: - 「白夜王国」編の購入 : purchase the Hoshido path - 「暗夜王国」編の購入 : purchase the Nohr path -　3つ目のルートの購入 : purchase the third path (will show an error message saying that it isn't available yet)

It looks like the other three texts are in fact (A transcription can be found here)

^Much appreciated! I'm sorry if my reply was confusing! I don't know whether you've looked at them in game yet, but the 'ancient texts' are all found in the Archives building in My Castle under "図書室" --> "古文書資料". If you look at the very last one (星界の石碑), you'll notice that it looks nothing like the other documents, and instead just lists 26 characters. This is the key for the other texts. The characters correspond to the 26 alphabet letters in the exact order they're presented in, and if you convert the other documents to alphabetic text you'll find that they're written in romanized Japanese. So it takes a good amount of effort to read them, but these texts were definitely intended to be read by regular players.

The texts include a pretty obvious key, so it does appear that they were supposed to be deciphered before the third route comes out. I tried to read them myself when I first noticed these texts in My Castle, and to be honest I gave up pretty quickly because it took a lot of time, but the one line I did manage to deciper happened to be a pretty big spoiler. It really makes me wonder why they thought it was a good idea to show us these ancient document things right from the beginning of the game. It would have made a lot more sense to have us unlock them by clearing the game at least once, or something like that. If you don't mind, do you happen to have page number/link to that post in the hype thread? I'd like to read the rest of the texts without having to spend ages deciphering them, but I'm not sure I feel like wading through 300 pages to find them.

I'm going to join the Nohr chapter 11 bandwagon, although I think the chapter you guys are referring to is actually chapter 10. It really caught me off-guard on my first try, and I hads lots of fun trying to figure out a way to tackle it the second time round. I think this map might just be my favourite defense chapter in any FE. (And I was kind of disappointed that there aren't more chapters like this!)

Oh, I absolutely didn't mean to say that 'long time fans' should agree with what these reviewers are saying, or that them being long time fans somehow makes their point more valid, I just wanted to point out that portraying the critical reviewers as trolls of some sort who shouldn't be taken seriously wouldn't quite do them justice.

As other people have already said, the gameplay is excellent and has definitely improved from Awakening, but the story... not so much. The characters are a mixed bag, really. There are a lot one-dimensional characters in the supporting cast, and some of them can get really annoying really quickly if you don't like their respective gimmicks, but fortunately the royal siblings are (in my opinion at least) generally pretty decent characters. That does not include Nohr-Kamui, by the way. It's also worth mentioning that the game looks, feels and sounds absolutely amazing, and while Awakening's presentation was quite good as well, Fates has definitely managed to surpass it.

Amazon reviewers may be harsh, but many of them (not all, of course) are raising valid points about the story, the characters, the tone and the fanservice, among other things. They're not just complaining for the sake of complaining, a good portion of these reviews were written by long time fans of the series who are genuinely disappointed with Fates. And while Amazon reviews might not be representative for the general populace, they're generally more informative than Famitsu scores have ever been!

I agree. The premise for the Nohr route was really quite cool, but the execution was just terrible. The whole thing with the crystal ball was simply ridiculous. Aqua doesn't even bother giving Kamui a half decent explanation of what exactly Garon is, and what's worse is that Kamui doesn't even bother asking. It should have been a key moment in the story, as it's this very moment that gives Kamui a justification for conquering Hoshido, but the whole thing ends up feeling like nothing more than a terribly contrived excuse on the part of the writers. It also really irked me how, if we ignore the ridiculous reasoning for a moment, even though Kamui realizes at this point in the story that he must 'walk an evil path' to attain his goals (i.e. to defeat Garon and end the war), his behaviour after this point never really reflects that awareness. Instead, he goes about fighting the troops of an allied nation and parts of his own Nohrian army because their methods don't quite match with his own ideals. The whole, 'walking the evil path for the greater good' theme is forgotten because the writers are too preoccupied with showing us how incredibly noble and chivalrous Kamui and his friends are. And ironically it ends up making him look like a complete idiot for doing all of these things when he's supposed to be marching on the Hoshidan capital and put an end to the war as quickly as possible. I also dislike how many of the battles on the Nohr route seem utterly irrelevant to the plot at large. Nohrian troops are already at the Hoshidan border in chapter 6, when Mikoto is no longer there to prevent them from entering Hoshido, but somehow it takes until chapter 22 for the actual invasion to begin. The duchies and clans that we have to deal with in the meanwhile never manage to feel like compelling story arcs of their own because they typically only take one chapter each, and, more importantly, the game provides us with very little background information on each of them. When Garon tells us to put down a rebellion in some distant duchy, the game doesn't even bother to tell us what the relationship between Nohr and this duchy is. There's hardly any proper world building going on. Each of the places we visit before finally entering Hoshido has its own name and aesthetic features, but that's really all there is to these places. There seems to be no effort on the part of the writers to make us care about what happens there. There are many aspects of FEif that could be called outstanding, but I'm sorry to say that the story on the Nohr side simply isn't one of them.

It says the latest version of your My Castle has been made public and your player card has been updated.

That's pretty cool, although I was kind of hoping for more terrain types. The code still doesn't work for me. It says "データが見つかりません"

I see, that probably explains it! Just out of curiosity, what kind of terrains will we be able to choose from for third route castles? And what does the building architecture look like? (And do the shops and armories sell Nohrian or Hoshidan stuff, or both?)

Hidden weapons, if I'm not mistaken. That's a castle address, but it isn't working for me. Any chance a typo snuck in, someonewhodied?

From what I've heard bond units have a Kamui portrait with features from both of the players' avatars. Haven't actually seen any bond units myself though, so take that with a grain of salt.

It's difficult to tell since most people queuing for random battles right now don't have fully leveled teams yet, and neither do I. Once I get to the point where I can use eternal seals on my own units I'll make sure to give it a try and see what exactly the stat limitations do!

I'm only halfway into the game myself, but judging from what I have seen so far the Nohr campaign definitely delivers on those promises. While there are some exceptions, most of the maps have interesting layouts, and some have unique mechanics specific to that map or complex objectives like "complete A OR complete B within X turns". Overall, the map/chapter designs are simply much better than I would've dared to hope for after Awakening (which imho was rather lacking in this department).