Delfino

Any mother could probably be considered "bad" for certain children. Like why would you put Nyx with Arthur or Charlotte with Leo, you are cannibalizing their growths and stat mods. Setsuna and Rinkah's growths in almost everything are flat out appalling if you ask me, so I'd probably say that they're overall the worst.

This is only making me more anxious to see all of the official artworks. I wonder when they're going to release the artbook already... it's driving me crazy! The DCL CGs look nice, Nina looks super cute. I'm a bit disappointed that they, again, only seem to have played favorites, but thank you for the links.

The mechanic is extremely fun to play around with (What kind of stats for the kid will this pairing yield? What kind of skills and classes do I want?), but the execution plot-wise was balls. I'm with Dark Holy Elf in that I'm not even mad, though. It's just completely laughable. I would hate to see the kids go because they add a huge chunk of gameplay hours for me, but it'd be great if IS chose to rework their integration into the story for future games, as well as not come up with the most hilariously stupid reason for their existence. That seems to be the main gripe people have with them, anyway.

My Saizo is married to Rinkah, so I can probably get him Deathblow today if no one else steps up to the plate. EDIT: Got it. Castle Address is 14656-71430-70224-27926. Throne is empty and everyone's on Defend, so it should be easy.

Garon is definitely the most disappointing thanks to the mountain's worth of lost potential. He is just so predictably cliche in every scene that he shows up in. "Kill everyone because I need to demonstrate how evil I am. If you disobey me, even if you're my own child, I'll kill you too because I need to further demonstrate how evil I am." There was so much more they could have done to make Garon actually interesting and to get us to sympathize with the Nohrian siblings when they have to fight their own father. So I'd say Garon is the worst villain for how boring he truly is. Hans and Iago are just dull, cliche villains with no depth, though I'd say they're simply plain more annoying than Garon thanks to their plot armor. You can't kill Hans because Iago would tattle on you, and Iago's fluctuating magic powers come and go for plot convenience so he can make your life miserable. They serve plot-related purposes of course, but as characters, I find them highly uninteresting.

A few modifications to your steps to make it bit easier: 1. Set up a file where Corrin has all S support ranks ready to unlock right before the final chapter. 2. Copy that file, choose a spouse, grind for the skills and then purchase the character as an Einherjar in the shop instead of beating the game. Save. 3. Open the original file that's set before choosing a spouse and purchase all the skills they only get being married to Corrin. Einherjar are saved to all files much like supports, so you can just buy them in the extra file, and as long as you save, they'll show up in the logbook on every file, and then you're free to overwrite the unwanted extra saves. It's so much easier than beating the game over and over again, especially if you're grinding skills for more than five characters at once.

I prefer Kaden character-wise, but Keaton unit-wise. Design-wise, I find Keaton's humanoid form more appealing than Kaden's, but Kaden's beast form looks better than Keaton's. Kaden is funnier with his crazy laughs and silly quotes ("I've never met a grumpy pants with pants as grumpy as yours"), but I found Keaton way more useful on the battlefield. Physical enemies heavily outnumber magic ones in most stages, which automatically makes Keaton a safer choice to have in the fray in most cases. He's typically way better at taking hits in general, too, with his excessive bulk. Although Kaden is awesome for screwing over mages, picking at their usually low defense and laughing at counterattacks with his high res, baiting mages with him can be frustrating since he doesn't have any ranged attacks, so I usually just end up using Kaze instead. It's also risky sending Kaden out against physical attackers since his defense is typically so low, and you have to get in their faces where they can usually counterattack you. Although he's more likely to double, if you can't kill the enemy in a single hit, you end up having to rely on them missing, and we all know how the RNG is in this game. I've been using both of them and they've been of great use in their respective games, but I think Keaton has been more useful in general.

Top Conquest Bottom Conquest I'd do top/bottom for Birthright, but to be honest, very little from Birthright stands out in my mind. The game is just far less memorable than Conquest to me.

Lol, maybe they didn't want you to feel too guilty about not giving your units accessories/not being able to give them accessories. I can imagine birthday accessory requests blindsiding new players before they've even unlocked the accessory shop, or sometimes you get someone asking for something before you've been able to afford much, so you don't really have anything to give. OR, if you're like me, you get so incredibly sick of accessory requests while you're checking "!" units for resources and new weapons that you just say no every time. Don't pressure me, lol.

Wait... so a story you liked yet have already witnessed would be the reason why you'd replay a game as opposed to amazing gameplay that is bound to be a different experience every time? Wow. I see that we play video games for very different reasons. How much focus did the marketing really put into the story? I know they put a ton of emphasis into the choice, but I feel like that's different. I mean obviously they're going to market and emphasize the choice because the buyer is going to have to choose and it changes the entire game.

THIS. This so much. Each version is a complete game packed with content with enough meat to warrant the price tag. I don't really mean to insult anyone, but sometimes it just really feels like some people are merely butthurt that they aren't getting more for less. You're still getting $40 worth of content. They even allow you to get the other version, which is in itself a complete game, for half the price. I think people are putting way too much emphasis on the story. Yes, it's a part of the package, and it could have been and should have been handled better. But does a bad story in a game with otherwise phenomenal gameplay really warrant a 1-star review? It just seems ridiculous.

I like most of the gimmicks that aren't heavily one-sided and instead rely on clever usage by the player which can backfire if not used wisely. That way it feels like it's legitimately your fault when things go terribly as opposed to the enemy just having some trump card they can screw you with when they want. Most of the latter examples I disliked, save for the water draining in Conquest chapter 10. That made the map a whole lot more chaotic in a good way. I think my favorite was the cloning gimmick in Conquest chapter 15. You really have to strategize your equipment, positioning, and the order in which you take your actions there, or else a move that may seem good with one character on one side of the map may end up screwing their counterpart on the other side. I also actually liked the gimmick in Conquest chapter 24 with Hinoka speeding up fliers and slowing down ground units. It forces you to decide whether or not you want to slow the fliers down at the cost of possibly allowing ground units who would otherwise be out of reach to get you. I generally don't like it when levels have a bunch of harmful dragon veins just handed to the enemy. Birthright chapter 22 was probably my least favorite in that regard. It's like no matter where you go, Camilla can just rain damage down upon you, and then high-movement fliers come in to finish you off. I know you can hide in the alleyways, but it's not like you're making any progress when you do that...

I'd love to be able to rely on my Jakob in Conquest. I really would... his stats are garbage after being consistently RNG screwed, and I usually only use him to heal, but he does seem to have one saving grace: tomebreaker. It usually knocks the enemy's hit rate down to less than 20%, which is great on paper, but there's one problem. Every single time he's faced an enemy with a hit rate of 10-19%, they always hit him. Always. I literally can't get him to dodge a single magic attack unless it's in the single digits. I could cry.

Thanks for the head up, agnienessyo! Sorry AmiAmi, but you're too sloooooww! *shuffles feet obnoxiously* Now to just wait a month and a half...

AmiAmi is the website I use for importing stuff, and they allow pre-orders. If you have a paypal, it's really easy to buy from them as long as you're familiar with making online purchases. Super excited for this soundtrack, there's no way I'm missing out. Fates definitely has one of the best soundtracks I've heard from a game in a while.

I think they should give all of the characters equal treatment so that no fan feels left out for having different tastes with their favorites, but I may as well be laughed out of existence for even suggesting such a thing. Maybe they'll be nice and do all of the royals, plus the top couple non-royals of each gender for both first gen and children from each version of the game, and maybe one of each gender in the neutral section? That'd keep things balanced at least, which is only fair. Who knows how generous they're going to be, though...

I'm gonna forge until the end of time! I always end up giving my weapons stupid names, especially Odin's. He gets to run around with a sword named Stabby Object and a tome named Mindless Drivel. Probably gonna forge a killer axe for Arthur and name it JUSTICE to make his battle dialogue even funnier. It'll be nice to be able to buy Eternal Seals as well without having to spam "Wait" on characters with the Profiteer skill thirty thousand times. Trust me, it gets old really fast.

Yeah, it's not too hard to cheese chapters 20 and 21, but I'd really hate to skip out on all the exp and treasures! To be honest, all of my RAGE has come from Conquest (though despite that, I do think Conquest is more fun and rewarding). Birthright's been cake through chapter 22.

Since you're on Normal/Casual, I wouldn't worry too much about what units you use. Just go with whomever you like! You'll be fine. I've been doing just fine on Hard/Classic using both Arthur and Odin, with the former being something of an MVP despite the bad reps both characters typically get though my Arthur's crit rate is in the 80's, sooooo If I were to give advice, though, I'd say: -Like Dark Holy Elf said, watch out for enemy skills. Archers/Mages with Counter, Ninjas with Lunge, Faceless with Savage Blow, and many others will appear. Though less prevalent on Normal, you will still see the occasional odd or tricky ability. -I would use Niles, and I wouldn't reclass him. Aside from him being an awesome mage killer, bow users are hard to come by in Conquest, you can otherwise only get a bow user by reclassing a select few units, which starts them at E-rank with bows. But it's up to you, of course. -I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this, but three of the Nohr royal siblings (Leo, Camilla, Xander) start out pretty OP when you get them, so obviously, having them soak up exp is bad, so I'd recommend only having them kill stuff when absolutely necessary until your other units catch up. -Resources and weapons are indeed much more scarce in Conquest. Go for every opportunity to get more money, like visiting 3 of 5 houses in chapter 8. Weapons you get from "!" units in My Castle can be incredibly useful. Equip your units with as wide a variety of weapons as possible. When you end up in a situation in which you can't relinquish a single attack, having that wimpy umbrella that can hit from a distance or that weak frying pan that has good accuracy on hand might save your butt.

Chapter 20 made me slightly rage-y. Fuga was nowhere near as obnoxious as Kotaro as some people were nice enough to let me know, and I got lucky with Xander landing a 9% crit with 51% accuracy, which wiped him out. Getting to Fuga was the hard part. I feel like the wind didn't even make any sense at times. Isn't it only supposed to move you five spaces, and then to the closest empty space if it blows you ever a gap? I swear it sent my Effie sailing past the empty space she should have landed on after the gap just so she'd end up stranded above a batch of enemies. Ugh. Getting the treasure on the far right was also a pain. Those stupid Kinshi Knights only like to attack you after you confront the lancers and get defense sealed. I managed, though. Chapter 21, though, ugh... I honestly don't blame people for cheesing the level by deploying only like, two people and flying from dragon vein to dragon vein. The faceless in this level give you nice experience... until you start getting overwhelmed by the ones that give you absolutely nothing, and soon you're just getting chip-damaged to death from Savage Blow and Grisly Wound. It was hard to even bring out my healers thanks to the ridiculous range of the Stoneborn. One shot from even the weak ones would kill Elise. I eventually just got fed up with being forced to hold a chokepoint against endless reinforcements with Xander and flew Arthur up to nail the Stoneborn with his 87% crit chance. What a pain in the ass level if you're actually trying to do it the "standard" way.

Is Conquest chapter 19 really that bad? I actually didn't have any trouble with it on Hard/Classic. I mean the invincibility periods aren't random, right? They seemed to just switch every turn when I played, so they were easy enough to plan around. I guess it depends on what characters you're using, but half of my team was weak to beastbane and it was still pretty easy. Also, am I the only one who makes use of bronze weapons? They're super convenient to forge, the high accuracy can help if you really just need one clean hit, and the +10 dodge has saved a lot of my units from ever being threatened by crits. Fairly useful in the aforementioned chapter 19 where the kitsune have high avoid and some unsettling crit rates. I do agree, though, that weapon proficiency is ungodly slow. Anyway, Conquest chapter 17 was nothing but rage for me. It more or less forced me to promote all of my units then and there, and further cemented my burning hatred for ninjas. After two hours of carefully trudging through debuff hell and keeping Saizou alive, I realized that my only hope of beating that blasted Kotaro with his ridiculous 80-whatever avoid was to place a mage with bind next to him and hope to god that 2 out of 3 hits with shaky accuracy would hit him. After the first 58% accuracy move missed, I was about sweating bullets. Luckily, Arthur and Keaton pulled through with 75% and 65% accuracy, respectively, but seriously... screw that level. I've heard stories about Fuga in the upcoming chapter 20 being somewhat similar in a sense, and I'm not looking forward to it.

I've actually been able to make a lot of use out of Odin and Arthur in Conquest Hard/Classic despite the fact that everyone seems to look down on them. I've never really had much of a problem with Arthur's crit-magnet ability, I mean he's got so much health that a crit usually won't do him in anyway... I've packed him with a bunch of different types of axes and clubs, so he usually has something that'll get the job done. He was easily able to tank a room of Samurai with the life or death ability after I paired him with Effie and gave him a dual club. 25% crit chance is nothing to sneeze at, and I'm sure it'll be even more nuts later. He's great for pair ups and his accuracy usually isn't that bad as long as he's around other units. I got a disrobing gale for Odin which really helps his ability to double. I might've just gotten lucky with his levels, though, because by the time I got Nyx, his stats were better than hers in almost every way, she just had one more magic point. He is technically outclassed, though, because he's obviously meant to become a Dark Knight thanks to his strength growths, but you get Leo, sooo... whatever. I still like using him, and he's been quite handy for me.

The red exclamation points for units that would get bonus damage against you is definitely a great addition. I love how character dialogue will change if you're buying a weapon/item for them while they're working at the store you're buying from. Odin: "Shopping on the clock? What corruption is this?!" Niles: "This is naughty. I like it." Actually, all the personalized dialogue in general when units are stationed places is great. Arthur: "The trees are pelting me with fruit! Stand back!" Niles: "Don't you find fruit so... stimulating? All that juice, bursting force at once..." Rinkah: "Oh. You're here." It really gives me an incentive to visit shops, even when I don't need anything from them.

I completely spaced that Saizo has a Flame Shuriken, which uses magic instead of strength, in Conquest chapter 12. "Hahaa! My Silas has gotten defense almost every level up, he's equipped with a Nohrian Blade, and he's paired with Effie! You can't possibly damage hi-- wait, 15 damage, WHAT?!" Also, I managed to lure Reina out with Niles in Conquest chapter 13, only for him to miss his counterattack with relatively high accuracy. "No problem, I'll just freeze her with Elise." Freeze misses. "NOOOOOOOOOOO" I had gotten so many awesome level ups for Arthur, Odin, Effie, Silas, Camilla and my Avatar on that stage that I actually contemplated not resetting after she killed Elise, but I couldn't do it. I was so steaming mad that I actually hate Reina now.

There are a lot of ridiculous things in Conquest's story, but I really can't fault Corrin for not taking a stance against Garon. -Garon's army and Garon himself are too strong. It'd be suicide. -Corrin's siblings would turn on him. What proof do they have that Garon is a monster? You could say that Azura could have shown them Garon's slime form, but do they really have any reason to trust Azura? It would likely just seem like some plot from Hoshido to use Corrin to get Garon killed, and he could lose his siblings' trust from it. -Instigating a civil war within Nohr would be a terrible idea. I know slaughtering Hoshido really isn't any better, but Corrin would also likely have to go through his siblings and their retainers, whom he's been fighting alongside this whole time. Who would he have left, then? Azura, Kaze, Silas, Jakob, Felicia, and maybe Mozu. Even if he managed to rally enough support, things would probably turn into a massacre as Ryas said. -So let's say Corrin somehow does kill Garon. Then what? Xander takes over. Would the war with Hoshido just end? What if Xander and a big chunk of Nohr blamed Hoshido for supposedly brainwashing Corrin into starting a civil war and killing their king, and so they set off for revenge? There are a lot of things Conquest's story could have done better (making Garon an actually interesting, complex villain instead of just a monster in disguise would have been a start), but I think going directly after Garon would have been a terrible idea.