Medeus

I completely underestimated the support my team would give to Ninian, I figured she'd be ahead of Fae but she's crushing the poor girl so far. I wonder if Ninian being on the second Hero Fest got her a lot of supporters.

I don't see why not, while there are some male manaketes there's definitely a favoritism towards young girls for the role, so it would be nice to get more variety in the group.

Got lucky on my summons and got a M!Corrin, he's pretty good from what I've heard so I'll build him once I get the chance. As for the Gauntlet, my priority will be Ninian>Tiki (either one)>Sophia>Fae>Nowi>M!Corrin>F!Corrin.

There are a number of factors to consider with FE:W that you can't say that just because it sold less then HW that means it's a flop. Theoretically Koei/Nintendo could've taken into account aspects like FE having less popularity then Zelda or the decreasing sales of the Musou genre and lowered their bar. Until we get something like the sellthrough rate, saying the game flopped is just speculation, theoretically it could've done well for what either company were expecting out of it.

Characters I like that others don't: Knoll: More forgotten then disliked, but I remember enjoying his supports and I liked him as a Dark Magic user more then Ewan. Shiro: A well-rounded character locked behind the stigma of the babyrealms. Lief: Another example of being more forgotten then hated, I feel he's one of the stronger lords since the challenges and failures he endures are a lot more meaningful then most other lords and the way he grows is pretty likeable. Skrimir: I see a lot of fans call him an idiot and he is, when he starts out. As the story goes on, he starts to respect Soren more and appreciate the need of strategy and charisma rather then brute strength, and after his failure with Zelgius he mellows out and becomes a more thoughtful leader. He ends up being one of Part 3's stronger points, and it's a shame that it gets lost with all of the issues that pop up with that arc. Saizo: He's typically seen as the edgelord ninja of the trio in Fates, but I found him to be the most likeable of the group since he has a good set of supports and an enjoyable motivation. Characters I dislike that others like: Selkie: I find her very one-note and her gimmick tends to be more annoying then enjoyable to me. Ophelia: Same boat as Selkie, I do prefer her gimmick, but the fact that it takes from Owain without the nuances that made him likeable hurts her. Narcian: While it fits his character, his constant underestimating of the heroes got a bit grating after a while and his strength isn't backed up enough to truly justify it for me. Alm: I don't hate him and I do appreciate the charm of his observation lines, but I don't feel he really goes anywhere as a character due to his personality not really having too many flaws to exploit or develop from. Berkut: He could've been a good villain, but since the story botches his pacing and relationship with Rinea I found him to be ineffectual and whiny rather then tragic.

Wyvern Knights, I like flight utility and since I usually gravitate towards units that can take a few hits before going down I prefer them to Pegasus Knights. They also tend to be among my most reliable units in each game they've appeared in, so that's also helped in getting me attached to them.

And again, this was not exclusive to Nintendo since as we just discussed Heroes had a similar thing. You may disagree with how it was handled with HW and FE:W vs. that game, but the decision to focus on a core set of games is not something Nintendo forces them to do, that's something Koei does themselves as a directional design for their crossovers. Here: http://nintendoeverything.com/hyrule-warriors-zelda-is-queen-zelda-aonuma-gave-the-dev-team-a-ton-of-freedom-soundtrack-more/ Also, it should be noted that Aonuma also took ideas from Koei's work on HW such as having bosses on the open field, so it seems like Aonuma was pretty happy with their work.

It's different in that Dissidia was made under Square yes, but you still had to take an older character with little established personality and flesh them out decades past their original creation for a spinoff with the original designers potentially being out of reach of the company. While it does lack the same communication issues of characters like maybe Pit or even Pokémon with TPCi, it's still work you had to do and a careful line you had to tread to ensure that the characters were portrayed correctly. Additionally, if they were wary about giving them personalities there were workarounds they could've done. Link also doesn't speak and has a limited personality dependent on the game he's in, but Koei worked around it by having a fairy speak for him, so theoretically they could've done something similar to preserve Erdrick and the heroes as characters without overextending their reach such as communicating through body language or having a character convey their thoughts in a limited matter. I do understand why they were wary to adding Erdrick or the DQ3 heroes, but just because I understand the apprehension doesn't mean that the issue couldn't have been dealt with. There were still probably people that were disappointed to see that those characters from the original trilogy were missing, and depending on the freedom Koei had the options may've been there to appease them. Forgive me for being a little blunt here, but I don't think you're claim is really founded here when it comes to HW and it seems to be mostly based on your own disappointment. Looking at the interviews, they're very free of any 'Nintendo had us do this, Zelda Team had us do that' type thing, they seemed to have a relative freedom to making the game they wanted to make. Similarly, they had enough leeway in the work they were doing for Aonuma and Nintendo to allow them to use Agitha, a character that was Koei's own personal choice that they wanted in the game and had very little notable popularity or plot importance. Between the situation we're seeing with FE:W and HW, it's like night and day, Aonuma and the Zelda team seem to be pretty hands-off and let them do what they wanted to do and it seems like they were pretty satisfied with the work Koei was doing. In short, the information we have on HW does little to support the claim that Nintendo is solely to blame. Both Nintendo and Aonuma didn't seem to have too much involvement past what was necessary and some of the controversial decisions that exist in the game like Agitha can be traced to Koei. Either way, there's a clear difference between what happened with HW and FE:W and whatever issues that exist within the latter game is likely something that's a result of its own exclusive case.

I voted for Ranulf, Hector, and Minerva. Two of them are personal favorites of mine while the third I feel would just be a lot of fun to play as.

Considering Dissidia pretty much crafted a new personality for Warrior of Light and Robin didn't have a truly defined appearance until Smash I'm not sure I agree that 1 and 3 couldn't have gotten their protagonists. If they wanted to represent those games character-wise there are options to do so (ex. follow Link's example and use a special character to speak for them for 1 and use a base appearance like with Corrin for the third one), they just chose not to so they could focus on other games. Similarly, just because a character isn't popular/not as iconic doesn't mean they can't be added otherwise as Agitha proves (she was added by Koei themselves) so I don't think that's a good excuse for 9 either. In general, there was still a focus on certain DQ games over others that left some of them underrepresented, and that direction is likely something Koei themselves are responsible for considering it's been present across three recent crossovers from them. Really, I feel the reason Heroes felt like it worked better is because it picked a set of characters that felt like they covered more bases, even if there were still holes here and there it came out a bit more satisfying. HW, while I will admit it sucked to not have WW characters, also had a nice base roster with a variety of movesets and characters that represented multiple aspects of their respective games as you had two sages, the main trio, three notable villains, one of the most popular side characters, and Fi. With FE:W, the problem wasn't the directional choice of having a focus set of games, it's that said focus was handled poorly. It does feel lopsided as from the choice in games, one of said games having a large main cast, and the other questionable decisions in terms of weapon and class balance it doesn't feel like many bases were covered well. Archanea got a spare few characters vs. Fates nearly half of the roster, classes like Armor Knights were ignored, and weapon balance (something they were touting as a reason behind the focus) still came out sword-focused as you have over ten that wields that weapon vs. many others three at best ignoring the NPC characters. I feel that if they chose the games differently (ex. trade out Fates for Elibe) and better spread their weapon and class choices, we probably would've came out more satisfied with the roster as then more bases and characters could've been covered across their game bias, but unfortunately they dropped the ball and that resulted in the roster we see now.

The original Dragon Quest Heroes only had characters from IV, V, VI, and VIII with IV getting the lionshare of the characters (three in the base game, four with DLC vs. the others two at most). So it's not a Nintendo only thing as you had six games that weren't represented character-wise in the original Heroes, which is not very different from how HW and FE:W went about their roster focuses. Also, the only thing we know Nintendo or IS requested were certain characters (Lucina being one of them), it's never mentioned who proposed the game focus.

That was probably my favorite character trailer of the ones we've gotten.

So basically they're going to use the DLC to flesh out the three focus games, that's a bit disappointing but hopefully they'll use it to add a few missing favorites like Azura and Minerva.

What salt? That'd be great!

Honestly I think they should do that, as you say there's a huge disconnect between Japanese and Western fans when it comes to his games and only releasing a remake that's generally regarded as mediocre by both audiences didn't help. Bringing over what's considered his stronger game and giving it the updates it needs would be perfect for reintroducing his story and could get both it and the characters within it a lot more fans similar to what happened with Echoes. Granted, I doubt it'd be a high priority since a new game is in the pipeline and in terms of remakes FE4 or FE6 seem to have more popularity backing them, but it's something worth considering if they want to keep Marth as their main lord of the series.

I did not expect that from Tiki's moveset, though in retrospect it makes sense and is quite fitting of her. It looks like a fun moveset so I'll probably try her using her once the game is out over here, particularly since I did enjoy using YL as a character and her gimmick is similar to his.

She placed fourth on this Famitsu poll, behind Ike, Marth, and Lucina (two of which are already in the game): https://kantopia.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/fire-emblem-famitsu-overall-favorite-character-poll-translated-june-2015/ Anyway, while I don't doubt that popularity probably influenced the decision to include her, I'd warn against treating her inclusion as a forced action by IS as a certainty. We don't know the full situation behind Koei's choices and for all we know they did set aside a couple slots for fan favorite characters of their own choice, so as said before until an Interview comes out and clarifies the issue it's best not to speak as if we know what the developers were thinking.

I'm pleasantly surprised that she's in, she was one of the characters I liked from Blazing Blade so I'm glad to have one of my favorites manage to make their way in. I'm looking forward to seeing more of how she plays as she looks pretty good so far and I'm hoping her playstyle will be fun to use.

That's not a good way to approach that as not everything IS does is reflective of what Nintendo as a whole feels and vice versa. Nintendo has some clout over them, but like with their other partners and subsidiaries they can have their own direction and autonomy. We already see that in how say Zelda approaches their spinoffs compared to Fire Emblem, so we can't completely make Nintendo and IS equivalents here. The key word here is 'might' though, you're right that we can't assume that they did share the information, but nothing also says that they didn't as we don't know how Nintendo or IS feels about this situation either way. They could consider the risk worth it for the extra advertising Celica in the game would bring and maybe if necessary tighten the leash that they have on Koei as an extra protection to make sure nothing leaks. It may be more risky then with Roy (key word being may as we don't know how the relationship is between them), but there's always going to be that risk when you have classified information shared between different parties. Additionally, companies have done riskier things for less reward, so it can't be assumed that IS or Nintendo wouldn't have gone for it out of fear. Until we know more, it's going to remain a distinct possibility, we just can't call it a probability because of the lack of evidence for either direction.

Except we also know Nintendo has suggested characters as well, so it's not like Nintendo would be out of the loop. If IS wanted Koei to use Celica, they'd know and probably approved it, so I don't believe it would've made that much of a difference in the long run since Nintendo still has a presence for both projects. Additionally, character suggestions have happened between different parties as well and for advertising reasons on top of that. Part of the reason PlayStation All-Star had a questionable roster was reportedly because other companies kept saying 'no, we're not giving you this character, we'll give you this one', which is why we got things like Raiden for Metal Gear Revengeance rather then Snake, Dante from the reboot rather then his classic form, etc. As for the OCs, that depends on how early they were presented as the only detail we know is that they weren't aware at the time, with the exact time not being known to us. Theoretically it could've been before the roster was decided and they were just starting to plan out everything for the game, with Celica being a late addition a la Roy.

Honestly, the fact that IS shared Roy with Sakurai does lend to the possibility of them sharing Celica with Koei. Yes Sakurai was working between companies with strong Nintendo ties, but we know that IS is working closely with Koei to the point that things like character suggestions are being contributed to the game through them. So it's not like there's a strict boundary between the companies that is hard to cross, IS can and has had an influence for which characters are playable such as with Lucina, and if they do have that much influence they can easily suggested adding in one of the two Echoes protagonist as promotion. Also, we can't just look at what happened with HW and use that as a strict guideline for how IS will act. The Zelda team and FE team are both under Nintendo, but they're still two different teams with potentially different ideologies and directions and we already see that with the more hands-on approach that the latter seems to be taking relative to the former. Theoretically, IS could be more open with their upcoming projects with Koei and thus they knew beforehand Echoes existed unlike what happened with LBW .

Listening in I'm very sure it's just A Dark fall all the way through. It keeps the general flow of the song throughout and you can hear notable cues from the original throughout the whole thing such as the instruments mimicking the original's choir at certain points such as at 1:30. It's especially the case since Alight clearly is the centerpiece song for Hoshido's and I doubt they'd mix in a bunch of songs for Nohr's music, but not Hoshido's. At this point, I'm starting to wonder where the hell Azura is, she has a major connection to all of the Fates characters in the game so it's strange they'd just completely ignore her.

Poor Marth, he's all alone. Also, interestingly Gharnef is missing on his Shadow Dragon map, which is kind of odd when they weren't concerned in the slightest about Validar. Hmm...

That's... Someone I don't think anyone expected to see. Not sure he's someone that people wanted to see, but that's still a surprise nonetheless. Anyway, I'm more interested in that History Mode. Depending on how it's implemented it could allow for other villains that aren't relevant in the main story to pop up like Gangrel and Walhart. It would be nice to be able to fight them even if they're not playable outside of potentially costumes.

That's terribly fucked up, while the Gauntlet definitely needs work doing something like that is not justified by any means. You can't ruin someone's life like that over something so minor, it's just a game, that's all it should be.