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I'd imagine the character loyalty issue stems more from Suzukaze and Felicia than anything else. They're the only two where their betrayal is actually confronted in the plot, so if you didn't find their reasons for defection on the appropriate route particularly compelling than the intended mark of that lil moment is kinda just missed. The characters who join you on both routes out of loyalty are pretty main plot irrelevant anyways. They've got a few moments here and there, but they're rather quickly pushed aside once you get more royals. The servants pretty much stop talking in the main plot post choice scene, Cyrus a few chapters after, and Suzukaze becomes relevant at random.

Speaking as a Xander fan, it's the tragic prince thing he's got going on (in supports and the main plot) + his whole 'gotta repress all my feelings' deal. Sure looks help, but Leon's generally held as the way 'prettier' prince. I know I jumped that ship once we started getting plot/personality stuff. Marx is really well written, so that's a plus, too.

Well, the black vs white decision helps emphasize the conflict IS decided to focus on, so from a writing standpoint, it makes sense. Whether or not it was the better theme to focus on is purely personal preference.

Yeah, but Fates didn't try to present a muddy conflict. The goal of the story wasn't to show that war among nations isn't black and white. I haven't played Thracia 776 so I can't speak well on it, but I can only assume that a muddy war helped whatever theme (or maybe was the theme) of the game. For Fates, this just isn't the case. They picked a different focal point for the story than showing how war among nations isn't black and white. The game doesn't read like that in the slightest, and it doesn't try to. Of course Fates is going to be a crummy representation of a grey war, seeing as showing this wasn't their goal in the slightest. If the game read like it actually tried to show a grey vs grey conflict and failed miserably, then I'd be a lot more disappointed in the plot. Instead, it's pretty clearly not even a side goal of the story. Trying to fit Fates into the grey vs grey conflict does it no favors because it makes no effort to be there. It reads like a lot of writing and development was put into taking the story in a different angle. If you haven't read what you can find of the Nohr route yet, at least, reading will probably help, provided you aren't trying to squish the story into that grey war thing while you read.

And the generic evil villains are another of my complaints. Reading the dialogue should probably help make it apparent that the goal in the main plot isn't to write a grey war though. Like I said earlier, it felt way more focused on greater good vs. loved ones, so muddying up Nohr/Hoshido to be equally worthy routes would remove this conflict by removing the greater good portion. It's a pretty common theme, too, and the Nohr characters + Kamui at least almost all struggle with it, so some thought obviously went in to connecting it to everything on the Nohr route, at the least. If FE14 was purely a war story without any kind of moral question, then I would've been a lot more disappointed that the kingdoms were black/white. But it's pretty clearly not and greying the conflict only hurts what's currently written given the direction IS decided to take the plot. Edit: @Ryo: There were definitely still issues, slime Garon, Aqua, crystal ball contrivance, generic villains, etc, but some of the stuff I've seen brought up I didn't find at all. I had actually popped on the thread before playing the game, and based on people's posts, expected the game to be a mess... but I ended up being pleasantly surprised. Takumi and Leon aren't the only important/developed/etc siblings, Kamui's not plot ruining, Marx (and all the other Nohr royals + Kamui) makes sense, the Nohr route has a plotline that's generally solid, sure the conflict's not grey vs grey but the story's not worse for it. Etc. It just sounds to me like a lot of people expected a certain type of story and are now trying to fit the one we were given to their expectations. Which makes sense for the people working out their AUs but doesn't work if you're trying to criticize the plot for being poorly written.

Teamwork! Really, though, the Nohr plotline sounds really ridiculous in some parts until you actually play it. The main dialogue works wonders. If you haven't/can't play the game but aren't avoiding spoilers, I totally recommend using the translation I linked. It's about half the game atm and includes the whole crystal ball/'we gotta put Garon on the throne' decision, which actually reading (and reading the chapters before) really helps understand. There are still issues of course (Slime Garon is just sooooo much wasted potential and Aqua's a mess), but the actual dialogue will probably help clear up or at least improve some of the things people are bringing up. The plot summaries floating around really don't do the Nohr route justice. They remove a lot of the nuance, and unlike on Hoshido/IK which are more plot driven/straight-forward, it's a lot more important in Nohr to get word for word what the characters are saying.

I wouldn't say the dialogue even vilifies Takumi. On the Nohr route, he's treated as pitiable, and even at his first appearance after the route split, he's already clearly struggling with his possession. The sense that his actions/anger aren't completely his own and that he's clearly struggling with... something is pretty obvious, enough that even Kamui's like 'whoa let me help you.' For that matter, his hatred of Kamui isn't treated or claimed to be unjustified in any way. There's just a strong vibe of it not being as intense as it's portrayed, what with it being worsened by his possession. He's not treated as any more of a villain than any of the other Hoshidans. Just a rather tragic casualty of the war. Edit: Maybe Takumi sounds villainous if you've only read the plot summaries so far, but I thought the main dialogue made it pretty clear that he's not a villain.

It's probably just a story preference thing then. I actually preferred that we got some moral struggle this time instead of just generic FE war drama (well, outside of IK, which is generic FE war drama). It was nice to get a more... flawed, I guess? main cast than usual and actually have these flaws impact the story (especially on the Nohr route, where we get to experience a flawed lord more fully than FE usually allows). Given the way FE structures its chapters, adding anything more than the loved ones vs greater good dynamic on the Nohr route would probably leave the writing too crowded/slow down the story pacing. FE's never handled subplots/in-plot character development/just about anything except the barebones plot well, and they're already devoting far more dialogue than usual to develop Kamui on the Nohr route. Odds are it would mean either extra chapters or exposition, which FE tends to overuse already and it's painful. Even if it's the end goal, the Nohr route does go far beyond just making sure the four siblings live. The writing gets split over giving us actual in-game character development (always sparse in FE), this whole other priority vs greater good issue (which appears in and is discussed by multiple characters over multiple chapters), building three core villains over multiple chapters, and giving us the Hoshido war and Slime Garon plotlines. As far as FE goes, it's a pretty busy story. With subplots and character development, which is a rather nice (in my opinion) change from the usual plucky lord fights an evil king and then he fights an evil dragon feat. some evil assassins and/or a bunch of evil dukes that try to seize some power but you usually kill in one chapter anyways. I've been replaying FE6/7 recently, so maybe that's just coloring my opinion, but FE usually handles political/war drama really poorly. Maybe technically sound in that there are battles and a lot of little lords/dukes/kings, but often unengaging from an emotional standpoint, as everyone just expositions at you, often only appears as relevant for 1-2 chapters, and/or seems to serve little purpose outside of existing for you to fight. I'd take an emotionally compelling story with characters that make mistakes over a logically sound one any day, so I guess it's just a personal preference thing.

Once Kamui begins to regret her decision (round midgame?), she says, directly, that even though Hoshido was the 'good' path, she couldn't follow their side because to do so would mean fighting Marx and Leon. If by new siblings you mean the Nohrians, then you don't even have to infer that she loves them too much to betray them at all, because it's right there in the dialogue. And yeah, the game makes Kamui regret her decision. Because it was a selfish/naive one. She picks a core group over an entire nation without realizing/considering the implications of that choice. This is where some of that 'greater good vs loved ones' theme comes in to play as we deal directly with the fallout of her decision. The Nohr siblings live, but at what cost?

I imagine the localization's not going to change too much honestly. Muddying up the Hoshido/Nohr conflict so that both sides are greyer kinda ruins the plot as it is now. The whole black/white nature of the two sides really emphasizes that there's an element of selfishness in choosing the Nohr route. Prioritizing something else over the greater good is a common theme in the Nohrian characters (the royals, the retainers (Belka and the Awakening trio especially), Nyx... Can't speak on the others because I haven't looked much into them), and Kamui's decision to stick on their side essentially makes her one of them. And it does the same to the neutral route characters, too, for that matter. Changing the way the countries are presented kinda wrecks the parallels a lot of work was clearly put in to create and would probably mean either changing characters or just losing the parallels entirely. I wouldn't say the goal of the plot is a grey morality thing that IS just royally screwed up. The choice scene read to me like a Hoshido/greater good vs. Nohr/loved ones, and then it was echoed in a lot of the characters (on the Nohr side at least), Kamui's actions, and the conflicts in both routes. Seeing the fallout of picking your loved ones over the greater good (and vice versa) was actually really compelling. Hope they do something a lil better with Aqua though...

While the event itself was poor writing, the rest is just kinda story telling. Kamui makes a decision in line with her character and with several chapters of build up. Then it results in more conflict. That's just how you write. I'd say Nohr has a lot more of these sorts of ups and downs than previous FEs, and it's one of even fewer to actually feel bleak at a few points though. So perhaps that's why this one feels so much worse than other FE installments to people.Aqua, as plenty of people have pointed out, is a lot messier, but just because her poor decision was the catalyst for the Nohr/Hoshido plot, it really doesn't render every decision Kamui makes poorly written. A bad decision or a decision you disagree with isn't necessarily a poorly written one.

Since you can find the writing from the other main game online, there's not much reason to buy all three games, unless you're one of those people who needs to experience the story firsthand or you want the maps. Getting the copy with your favorite characters, then IK, and then maaaaaybe the route you didn't play after that (if you liked their characters in IK) is probably the way to go. Personally, Nohr was my preferred main game. The Hoshidans were kinda bland in comparison to them, and even on the Hoshido route I still cared more about the Nohrians than the Hoshidans. But Hoshido (and IK) is closer to generic FE so if you want to play it safe on story, that's the way to go.

Like I said, I didn't find Garon an interesting character either. Unfortunately, in a game like FE you can't flesh out everyone, and consistently putting barebones work into their enemy units is a common issue in the series. As for the narrative twisting itself around Kamui, the narrative is a character driven plot, and that's simply... what a character driven plot can end up looking like. A character driven plot isn't bad writing in and of itself, though the game definitely suffers from poor execution in a few parts and other instances of bad writing. If you don't like Kamui, though, you probably aren't going to like it. That doesn't mean the plot is poorly written (though it definitely is in some parts), and there's no such thing as a plot that satisfies everyone, nor should anyone try to write such a thing. And this would be a great example of some of the poor writing. But, aside from being caused by this contrivance, that Kamui then has to follow along with the invasion is not. Just because a certain point in a story is badly written, it doesn't render all the writing after it badly written as well.

They heavily establish Garon is the supreme power in the first chapter of the Nohr route, and the game reinforces this a lot, especially really close to the invasion chapter, with Ganz at Chevalier giving you another additional reminder and the siblings' 'if we don't do what Father tells us, he will kill us' dialogue across multiple chapters. And once again, just because Kamui isn't directly trading physical blows with Garon doesn't mean they aren't in conflict. There's a rather long, over-arching struggle between the two that you can trace all the way back to the first chapter of the Nohr route when he sends Kamui off to the Ice Tribe. Their main struggle is over his desire to bring Kamui to despair, which he blatantly states is his motivation for sending her on these tasks, and it culminates in Ryouma's suicide, with Kamui crying over his dead body, not the person she was before. As for the invasion of Hoshido, it comes all of a few chapters after Kamui begins lying to Garon about cooperating with him. She even tells Aqua that she's decided to play along as it's her best option. There's build up to this in the chapters before, most specifically Leon's chapter with the dancers, where he explains to her that lying will save the dancers from being murdered and that this is how he disobeys his father. They even get the whole 'Hero of Nohr' blessing right afterwards, which is pretty much a seal of approval. Whether or not you find Garon interesting/imposing is more personal than anything else. Honestly, I thought he was generic big bad guy and that the Nohr route was a little weak on interesting enemies (unless you maybe want to count the Hoshidan royalty), but the conflicts themselves were interesting.