vanguard333

Kronya does indeed have the same problem, but I think she gets a pass becayse the implication in the story seems to be that Solon and Thales are the ones actually planning and she, well, isn't a planner/schemer; she's just an agent/minion. Plus, she at least kills Jeralt, creating a brief personal conflict for the Byleth character. If anything, Kronya was underutilized.

Anyway, I just completed the first part of chapter 18 on the golden route:

Agreed. The Remire Village experiment never comes up again; all it did was expose the existence of TWSITD. His only plan that made any sense was the plan to use Kronya as bait for a trap to kill Byleth.

Speaking of that deal, if the one you're talking about is the one I think you're talking about (correct me if I'm wrong), I wonder:

No; it's only been five years since BOTW so far. It will be six years since BOTW when BOTW2 releases in 2023.

Well, it's a good thing that all my Breath of the Wild 2 predictions all had the condition, "if it releases this year", so they're all still valid. I predict (and hope) that Breath of the Wild 2 will have nothing to do with Age of Calamity at all; it will be purely a sequel to Breath of the Wild.

True. Isn't the popular Shigeru Miyamoto quote, "A delayed game is eventually good; a rushed game is forever bad." Ironically, one can tell that Shigeru Miyamoto has practically little-to-no involvement in these games anymore just by looking at which hand is holding the Master Sword; Link is supposed to be left-handed (which was Miyamoto's idea as he prefers to use his left hand and loves creating left-handed characters), yet every 3D Zelda game since Skyward Sword has been portraying him as right-handed.

Nintendo just announced that the sequel to Breath of the Wild has been delayed to 2023: This means that the sequel will release around six years after BOTW. Part of that was almost certainly due to the pandemic, but that's still six whole years. I'm not complaining; I'm just saying that it is a staggering number.

If Solon were to get in, it would be as an unlockable bonus character for the postgame, like Ganon being playable in Age of Calamity, and I don't think Solon is an impressive enough villain to merit being an unlockable bonus character. Plus, as others have pointed out, he has some strong competition for the role of "dark mage unit". Overall, 1/10.

…Weird.

I could see the teachers as playable. There's not really much that they can add and they have stiff competition, but I can certainly see it. This is a Koei Tecmo game, so I'd say Manuela is a bit more likely than Hanneman simply because of fanservice. Overall, I'd say probably 5/10 for Manuela.

I was really surmising when I said it was good loot; I don't know specifically what I would've gotten (though I know that you can tell what type of loot you've gotten from the colour of the bag, and one of the loot bags was one of a colour I hadn't seen before); I just know that the enemies dropped multiple bags of loot that didn't drop when I had to redo the mission. As for that third plot point you mentioned: Anyway, is it just me, or does this game seem kind-of torn between wanting the player to train a core team and stick with that core team (like Fire Emblem), and wanting the player to train and experiment with every unit they obtain and use the ones that are best suited to each mission (like Valkyria Chronicles). Stuff like the sheer expense in the upgrade system and each individual having to level up would suggest the former, whereas stuff like the game outright telling the player which units are recommended for each mission, as well as (golden route spoilers) would suggest the latter. Speaking of the golden ending:

Yeah; I figured out the problem shortly before you replied. Thanks for responding. I wouldn't know about the Falkes chapter since I chose to protect Roland. Anyway, my first ever bug with this game happened with this chapter: I called a minecart, it finished moving to the place where I called it, and then the game acted as if the cutscene never ended. The character sprites were still animating, so the game wasn't exactly frozen, but nothing would happen and the game was completely unresponsive to any input until I pressed the home button. It was a real shame, as I had gotten some really good loot from the enemy units up until then, and now that loot is gone and the enemy units that dropped them before aren't.

I know you're joking, but I don't think they'd be able to animate that; I've seen shows and games that will happily show blood and gore but draw the line at vomit (Castlevania for example).

Ah, I see. That makes sense. By the way, I'm currently trying the mine mission in chapter 16, and I cannot figure out how to get my units to use the minecarts. A minecart can be right next to them and nothing I do can make them enter it on their turn, and I need to use the minecarts in order to get to and defuse the bombs that are in the map on time. How do you get your units to ride the minecarts? I even tried watching a video of the mission on YouTube and the guy couldn't figure out how to make the playable units ride the minecarts either. EDIT: Never mind; I found out how to do so. It really is not intuitive (having to select a tile all the way at the other end of the track).

Well, I just recently unlocked a rather weird new character... Honestly, While Patriatte was undoubtedly motivated by more than the need to twirl a moustache, I admittedly had trouble understanding Patriatte's point when he gave his big motive rant. I genuinely did not understand why he came to see Wolfort as something to be purged.

Holst gets a 1/10. He'd probably be too sick from bad mushrooms to be playable.

I see. The wolfort one is a pretty good fight in the great hall against assassins, but it is greatly hindered by having an NPC ally that the player has to keep alive or it's game over (and said ally has absolutely zero sense of self-preservation).

I see. I had him return to castle wolfort. What are the battles in the other two versions like? I'm glad the game has it that all three things happen and the player just decides where Serenoa goes, but I find it weird that you're basically deciding where everyone except Roland, Frederica and Benedict go. Why not split into three evenly-sized groups? Seems kind-of weird to me that Geela would accompany Serenoa if he doesn't go with Frederica, or that Hughette would go with Serenoa if he doesn't stay in the capital with Roland.

Fair enough. By the way, in chapter 15, did you have Serenoa stay in the capital, help the Rosellan village, or return to the Wolfort home?

To be fair to Three Houses, the three nations were all originally once part of one empire and they've been deliberately kept technologically stagnant, so it does reflect the worldbuilding. But yeah, perhaps a bit more visual distinction would've been good.

Let me guess, it's the one route I have yet to finish that has a house leader in it: Azure Moon. I actually don't have to guess; when I looked up the name "Fleche", I found out that she has a more notable role in Azure Moon.

The fact that my first thought when I saw the name Fletch was "Who?" despite Crimson Flower having been my first playthrough of Three Houses probably says a lot. Then again, I'm not very good at remembering names. Fleche has an okay chance I guess, at least for an NPC. I think I'll go with 3/10 as well.

Well, if that doesn't work, Jeddah always has a dracoshield for that extra bit of defense and resistance. In all seriousness, modern warfare is particularly horrible; it's always started by the oligarchs, but it's always the citizens that suffer. At least in Feudal warfare the kings were expected to lead from the front line. Nowadays, political and military leaders can comfortably sit far away while making the decision to kill thousands.

I just remembered a couple others; all JRPGs, interestingly enough. Dragon Quest 11. I've never played a dragon quest game before, but this one looked really interesting. I played the demo for the definitive edition, I enjoyed it a decent amount, but I tried it around the time I had played a bunch of other story-driven JRPGs with serviceable-at-most combat, and I was not only sick of them, but I realized that I needed more involved gameplay than what these story-driven JRPGs can offer. So, I didn't purchase it. Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars. I just said earlier that I need more from story-driven JRPGs in terms of gameplay than what's normally provided, and this looked like it could've had that: a story-driven JRPG where everything in its presentation is built around cards. I played the demo, and it was okay, but the cards were only presentation; it didn't factor into the gameplay at all. Edge of Eternity. It's a JRPG that was developed by an indie studio consisting of seven people, and when I saw an announcement trailer for it a year or two ago, it grabbed my attention with an interesting premise and a very neat seamless turn-based combat that uses a hexagonal grid (as in hexagonal tiles instead of square tiles). I then found out about how long it already had been in early access, and then I found out a couple days ago that it had already been released; the fact that it released without me finding out until later did not bode well, and then I saw that it was online-only despite being a single-player JRPG, and then after that, I saw extremely mixed reviews along the lines of "Its heart is in the right place, but it's really not very good". In the face of all that, I decided not to play it.