Interdimensional Observer

Some of the maps do make me ugh and are a little too gimmicky (Wind Tribe, the Kitsune and Mokushu battles lack enemy variety), and Inevitable End at the end is cruel (not Iago's use of it so much as everyone else's), but generally the gimmicks aren't overpowering I find. The pots weren't, Takumi's Moses moment wasn't, nor was the stairs of the Sevenfold, the Wall and Eternal, the timed two boss rout of Izumo, Ice Tribe village rush, the find Shura boat, the Ryoma duel, Sakura's Jinya, and the Hinoka air assault. And then the Cheve, Opera, and C7 fights have no gimmicks at all. BR might be gimmick free, but it has the issue of really weak midgame enemies, and then at the end on Lunatic, the enemies are too numerous and too strong for the frail Hoshidans on pretty flat and dull maps. Rev Lunatic is BR Lunatic enemies with gimmicks that aren't as well handled as CQ's. Rev has: virtual Corrin solo (unless you went female and have Jakob- I find Morrin on Rev. is even more tedious), virtual Corrin solo II, virtual Corrin solo III, near Corrin solo IV (because your new recruits are so weak). Snow shoveling where you have to take things slow because otherwise somebody dies b/c you have no idea where the enemies are and you can only field a handful of units. BR Ninjaland featuring Master Ninjas you can't handle easily (but at least you finally have some good from the start units). Sluggish ice boats you're best off 2-turning. City of ruin, city of optional bosses you won't fight. Port Elise must be dragged around for full recruitment, otherwise easy if you don't go for full recruitment. Sevenfold eh. Okay fire fields where you should beeline for Hans. Iago's just give Xander a Concoction, a Fort, and a DS pal and watch him solo the right, which you need b/c foes are too darn strong (I'm always assuming Lunatic Classic here) and you don't want someone to die since then you have to repeat Ryoma's hot beats again. The land of teleporting, but nothing really strategic about it. Decent replica land. And then a blue-red eh indoors, 3 slow moving platform battles (2 of which demand fliers), indoor stealth that shouldn't exist, a grey forest, and then a boss blitz for sanity followed by HP sink with infinite reinforcements. Add serious character imbalances, too many promoted enemies too early, over-reliance on DVs, and CQ just has to be better than this. Or so I think. If my evangelism failed to move CQ above Rev. in your mind, well I tried and plead my case. But I won't try any further, I'll respect thy opinion. These aren't the days of the Spanish Inquisition.

It doesn't help that buffs and Panic are generally preferred over debuffs, right? How to fix this? Maybe a Dagger-user exclusive skill (programming that might not be easy) that reduces Atk but increases non-Panic debuff numbers by a certain amount? Maybe a skill anyone can use that causes them when fighting a foe, to fight them with any debuff they may have being larger than they are outside of combat (so a -3 outside of battle, becomes a -6 in battle, but only for the unit with the skill). Or a weapon that serves as a "Debuff -Blade (add up all the debuffs on the foe to unit's Atk". Colorless as a whole seems to be built around ideas of utility over offense-:support, debuff, and anti-flier, with Bows being standard offense with the utility more its side bonus. It's a matter of expanding the unique utility which they can provide. I'd love the idea of shutdown team being big on binds and ailments as I am in Etrian Odyssey. But to do this, standard weapon types can't be allowed in on it. They have to settle with having their nuclear offense counterbalanced by utility restrictions.

For Smash, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Yoshi, DK and Wario (although he really needs another Wario Land to stay relevant- I liked Shake It!) are fine for me. Rosalina and Bowser Jr. are the most objectionable additions, since Rosalina is a "flavor of the month" being only important in Galaxy. Bowser Jr. is a secondary character really. DK, Yoshi and Wario have developed their own franchises apart from good old Mario platformers. Diddy is the limbo char here, since he originated in Donkey Kong Country- the game that made DK it's own Persona-situation-esque spinoff series. I think Rosalina and BJ got added for the sake of adding new Mario characters to make that part of the roster fresh, just as Greninja did for Pokemon. And yet Zelda stagnated in Smash 4 with its four/five, no "flavor of the month" added there. As for Super Mario Run releasing first, Heroes was supposed to release in December (the same month as SMR) or before that I've heard. Hence the Christmas Tharja and M!Robin datamine. Why was it delayed? I don't know. On other Mario games- well the idea behind the NSMB series wasn't bad. Mario was overdue for a new traditional 2D platformer, and once they got out the DS original, they ran with it and continued to make more, even if the formula revived became the formula stagnated over time (but the Luigi variant of NSMB was thrilling with its strict time limits). On the non-Kart sports-side of the Mario world. I guess Nintendo wants to make sure you don't go a generation without a given sport being available, even if the sporting game in question isn't necessarily top quality. I think M&L and PM can take a break for now. We've had enough. Let the series sleep, desire among fans grow, and when time comes to make more, take the process slowly and try crafting something novel.

If that isn't sarcasm, I'd recommend trying to purge thyself of hatred or tone it down. VG characters aren't worth developing bitterness over, if you must hate, try to save it for real injustice in the world. For those in real life who really are worthy of being hated and disliked. Who? Murderers for instance, and rapists, and other nasty people, but I won't say more b/c that belongs in Serious Discussion. Fill life with good emotions when you can, save the taste of bitterness for what life throws at you, dark chocolate and bell peppers.

If there are two whole families of them, are any of them really capable of being called the term? I think it's just Fates wanting to focus in on families with Corrin being caught in a deeply personal struggle over which family to side with, and they overdid the focus. They gave each side a prim and proper royal Crown Prince, a strong big sis, an antisocial little bro, and a sweet little sis. The retainers weren't a terrible idea either, or the personal weapons. The former is realistic since you'd expect royalty to have loads of servants, and personal weapons in themselves are cool and add uniqueness to characters. But they overdid it. A near DV/First Blood monopoly, good personal skills, average to wicked growths, solid bases, nice weapons for the little bros, busted ones for the bigs (and nobody else save Corrin and Ophelia has personals weapons, and the princely weapons have infinite uses without any drawbacks). The royalty could have been handled better. Slash the retainer count, nix a few royals or make not all of them heroically good, add drawbacks to the personal weapons, expand the DV user pool, nerf their other gameplay boons. Here's a tip- skip on the FE fanbase if they ruin your appreciation of the game! Or at least certain sites. Anything where "praise praise praise" and "damn damn damn" is without restrain, consider skipping. I don't think SF falls into this problem. This is my stance on Ryoma pretty much. Balanced between the extreme of "he's broken nothing stops him" and "he's awful Hana is the goddess"; just because he's No. 1 on BR doesn't mean he can't die- Marcus can die on HHM, but he is still the best. I did manage to get through Lunatic BR without Ryoma on a Female-Only run. I forget how I survived Shura, but Spear Master Hinoka was ferried over to kill Hans (his battle is too brutal if you try to fight your way to him). I held in an alley with just Paired SpM Hinoka, Paired Dstone Corrin, and Sakura healing in between them fielded for Camilla 2. For Iago 2 I had Paired SpM Hinoka tank the left while everyone else cleared the right. I didn't get to slaying Garon, but it's clearly possible, if not that easy, to do BR Lunatic lategame without Ryoma. It's "enemies enemies enemies!" which defines the difficulty of late Lunatic BR.

Well the dragon mythos is good, and the rest of the world isn't too shabby either. I will admit that Archanea is certainly better than Awakening and Fates and Magvel- games where they never even tried to build a world. Archanea is below the top duo of Tellius and Jugdral, probably 3rd on the list, with Elibe competing for the slot (although it's the weaker of the two). I'll make a redaction on this. On the WT, I do recall Merciless making Lances fairly inaccurate early on, but after, Mannu I think is the last axe heavy battle, the accuracy issue doesn't really exist now does it? Instead, what becomes an issue is how weak Swords are. One of those is FtP. The other is 2-3 ish games under the same label. Of course, I don't know the sales numbers, so I can't say how much is people buying multiple versions and not distinct consumers. He looks totally inhuman, while not owning it and making it look diabolical or menacing. Darkness can corrupt the flesh, I get that. Manfroy is likely alive due to darkness preserving him alone (I say this since he looks old in Gen 1, and hasn't aged a day in Gen 2), but thank goodness he managed to avoid flesh modification. Jedah, can't say I like him, but the blue skin is more, explicable? Than Validar's unreal and jokeish limbs. For some reason I get "Aladdin" from him, which doesn't help either. When he "perishes" in the vision sequence, I'm just like "yeah, you're not human".

Niime is no looker, and nothing for anyone who loves growth units, but she caters to more efficiency/ease of use crowd. Compared to Raigh and Sophia, she needs no training to use at all, and comes with an amazing A Staffs too. Her Spd is on par with a 20/6 Raigh or 20/13 Sophia, and her Magic a 20/5 Raigh or 20/2 Sophia (her Skill exceeds a 20/20 Sophia's and Raigh's until 20/13). She's a late game goddess who can with 1-2 buyable Angelic Robes who can Nostank to S Dark for penultimate Apocalypse use about as strong as her competitors, and until then put that +5 Mag bonus to work with the Warp Staff. Sophia- she's a latecoming growth unit, a girl, she doesn't look bad (but her Heroes art is too cutesy for me), with an interesting background. For all her many gameplay faults in FE6 and overuse of ellipses, she has room for a following. Nyx and Ophelia are sort of forced into darkness, since there is no standard Mage in Nohr. Whether either of them would remain Dark Mages if a non-dark choice was available, I'm not sure. Nyx I think would be more likely to stay than Ophelia.

Bolt Axe + Spirit Dusts on Camilla and Rinkah (Fiery Blood is +4 Atk) works well. Hayato as an Oni is comparable to Rinkah too. The benefit to the Bolt Axe on Rinkah and Hayato is that it is 1-2 range, so it helps their enemy phase (it does have low hit though and Hayato has single digit Skl). Niles and certain Ninas can use the Silver and Shining Bows well. Odin can go Dark Knight decently. Saizo has good Magic (but lacks a natural magic or hybrid class) Of course, none of these builds use actual tomes, and most if not all require Spirit Dusts, since actual tomes are rather weak outside or quad Lightning, lucky Mjolnir crits, or Horsing/Nos-ing on the enemy phase. But Spirit Dusts otherwise have little in demand beyond hybrids.

It's worth pondering just what is DeNA planning right now. Why no Xander and Camus reruns? Why only 3 units in the Dauntless Crimeans Banner? Are they running out of steam/entering a long haul approach already? Are they conserving it for a holiday extravaganza or next year? Are revenues downs? (Ice Dragon make more money and fangasm over more units you beluga!) Is FE Switch news around the corner (very much doubt it until FEW releases internationally) and they're hiding a pre-release banner for it? What is their mindset? We don't know. But like with FEW's development process at KT, we so much want to know what the heck is/was going on.

Okay, I'll admit I was probably overplaying that and admit her inclusion was fairly random and not really GHB worthy outside of having a good class.

Takumi is only above average at best I think. His Archer competition on BR and Rev. is handicapped by low starting levels and stats, barring Rev. Shura. Takumi has a good start, coming right before or during the Mokushu chapter on both routes means auto-contribution making, with the powerful Fujin Yumi and his bases. But in the long run, Mozu and even Setsuna will outdo him (get them Silvers- and no, they aren't bad at all on bow units), and so will a Kiragi with a good mother. Or Apo!Azama, and Reina can last you pretty much until the end too. A reclassed Hana or Kagero (which can't happen without Takumi's sweet embrace), would outshine him too once they get the weapon rank up. Takumi's ease of use is key to his viability- he's only a little above average in Spd at best, about the same in Str, and his Skill is overkill and HP is not needed by a bow user. Make Takumi anything but a Sniper/Kinshi Knight, and you'll see how bland and not really special he actually is; unlike Azama and Hinoka who shine more once they escape their base classes. Is Takumi better than Leo? Leo is on a harder route, has a horse, and contributes a more meaningful (Res targeting vs. anti-fliers) offense utility. Leo like Takumi shares in weak competition barring a well-mothered kid (Ophelia in his case). Both of these royals are the worse in their family (the big sisters have growths and good classes, the brothers have good classes and personal superweapons, the little sisters are healbots with good personals skills and nice stats), and both should stick to the player phase (but Leo can go enemy phasing too under the right conditions). Yet even so, the little brothers aren't lacking and are still in the upper half on any tier list. I'd say Leo > Takumi overall though.

Well it's not that they're bad, it's just the matter of spacing them out. DeNA probably should have given us one by now now that I think about it. This said, isn't Arvis coming up? He'll be a flaming red tome infantry (or armor) for sure. Now which of Imhullu, Death (for Jedah), Loptyr, Stone, Ereshkigal, Naglfar, and Grima's Truth would have the most powerful innate effect? So many personal dark tomes to choose from. I was not joking when I included sexuality and beauty- Ursula has sufficient mammary gland containers and an elegant attire too. And she's more unique than Sonia the stripper from a gameplay perspective with a horse to her name, Sonia has at best slept with one (I hope she hated it if she did). Linus is the only Four Fang that is missing by the way. Add him, and one could make the Four Fangs an actual unit squad with Jaffar-Ursula-Lloyd-Linus. No Green barring an axe transplant for Linus, but I'm sure it could work. Narcian has memorability in the form of a lot of appearances prior to his death, if always as the Bernese Buffoon who wouldn't look beautiful no matter how many brandy barrels I drank. I included memorability in the "etc." he appears a lot in FE6. He also seems to be fairly good for meme-ifying- but let's hope that's not a criterion for GHB selections, otherwise Oliver and Cervantes would be coming up sooner than later.

First, Jedah and Rudolf? Charisma, tragedy, beauty, sexuality, badassery, popularity, etc.- if you want to be a GHB, you need some of these things. Does Jedah have any? No, not really I think. Does Rudolf? Probably not. Fernand, maybe, but he's the same as Berkut from a unit type perspective barring a Faye/Lucius-like changeup. Second, let's do a primary antagonist analysis: Medeus (yay Breath unit, yay original, but he's eh everywhere else). Gharnef (also yay original)? A Red (since Dark seems to equal Red in Heroes) Infantry Mage. See that above this list. See notation 1. And for Dark Emperor Hardin- absolutely why not add him. More Armor is better. Manfroy and Julius- Red Infantry Mages (Julius might be twistable into Green like Naga). Julius is cool, and Manfroy successful (but old and that hurts popularity). Raydrik- Armor Sword (like the BK and Zephiel), but he and Veld (another RIM) are bland and forgettable. Zephiel- already in, since he is memorable and added to the limited armor pool. Yuan is at best a "yay Breath", with little lovable about him. Nergal- a madman with some charisma, but another RIM. Lyon- a very tragic RIM. Ashnard- sword flier with personality- yayyyy! Blackie just so happens to overshadow his coworker though. Well there isn't one villain for the entire game. Jarod would be a rare Lance Infantry, Ludveck (who is blah) an Axe Armor. The Senators? No. The BK's Master whom I am so enamored with? I'll take them for sure, they've got the sym-pa-thy card! They're handsome! They'd be any color but Red for an Infantry Mage barring the dreaded Staff-shafting! FE13- Grima- FELL DRAGON RAWR! Breath I guess? Very easy to work in. But which sex do we base them off of? Vali-*pukes* It was bad enough they got in Warriors, let's keep them and their incompetency and spinelessness out of here and get Gangrel and Walhart in instead. FE14- Garon? Yes! From a gameplay perspective that is. From a plot- listen, nobody would be in from Fates if we used that criteria. Anankos can't work.

I'd guess it's because they're like rehash Banners (the kind with units already in the game). They don't really add anything (aka new characters) like GHBs do. BHBs pad things out, and the recent decline in new GHBs are leaving some on edge against these fakers.

Vulneraries appear to be an antiseptic topical liquid. According to Tellius at least: RD's Herbs are implied to be used the same way, since Kurth gives the injured Micaiah a bandage with Olivi Grass in it (Olivi Grass is probably ingested by Laguz though for shifting purposes). Whether Concoctions function the same way as Vulneraries, I don't know. Logically, it makes more sense than ingesting them. As for Elixirs, we have this suggesting they might also be topically applied: I'm guessing Sothe's hands were injured and Micaiah wanted the Elixir to treat them. Antitoxins and Panaceas are ingested I would guess, since poison gets into the bloodstream. Tellius fails us here.

I love the version in MP... 4 was it? The pachinko one. Reversal of Fortune! First we will decide who will be giving! *Pulls back on the plunger and releases, firing the ball onto the board* Tybrosion! Now we will decide who Tybrosion will be giving to! *Pulls back on the plunger and releases, firing the ball onto the board* Ice Dragon! Now we will decide what Tybrosion will be giving! *Pulls back on the plunger and releases, firing the ball onto the board one last time* All their Orbs! Congratulations! You just handed a whale something they have no shortage of. How does that make you feel? Joking aside, I hope Ninian doesn't win. She looks nice, she's got the half-human thing going for her, she's not a divine, and she's not a loli. But I don't care for her overly shy personality or treatment whatsoever in FE7's plot. She's a cliched amnesiac special girl who just rubs me the wrong way. Beauty is scales deep with Ninian for me.

The end in "a" probably messed it up for me, since that is generally a feminine trait in English. That and grannies sometimes go for the short hair look. Well don't I feel stupid now! What does it say that my opinion of them suddenly dropped a bit realizing they're not a woman? He's a terror with a Brave Lance and Wrath! Until you glance at his stats- a level 9 General with 14 Def and 15 Str over two thirds the way into PoR is laughable! While I understand why he was present, I feel he snubs Tauroneo, who gets no dialogue in the pre-fight despite being right there and a former Steadfast Rider. Tauroneo deserved some love; think of it as Ashy getting rid of the trashy he inherited from his daddy in the capital he has abandoned. I was going to mention Novala earlier, the Shaman from SS C6. Why? Because of this one little line: Novala:“Hmph… Freakish old man (Riev). You should have watched. You might have learned something. I will capture the princess, and I will replace you at our master’s side. You will stew in regret, and I will enjoy every moment.” It isn't odd to see a baddie backtalk against their boss, but I don't recall this ever happening among the dark mage/cultist types. They always seemed to be the pinnacle of loyalty.

I mentioned Hellene before, that is one of his very undiplomatic, but good moments. And it does pay off despite at first appearing to have ruined the chances of getting access to the Shrine of Seals. As for promoted Eliwood, he turns out good in the end, but he can't promote for a long time on his own mode (he's a bit better on Hector Mode with the first Heaven Seal), and always has 2 less Con than the Cavs/Pallies, which does affect Lance use a bit. In the less than ideal term, on Eliwood Mode he might not even make it to 20/10 given how little time he has available. I know Normal Mode enemies are jokes, but I don't know about Hard ones in the lategame (beyond a plentitude of unpromoted enemies even here), and the Final enemies are always strong. Like son like father, Eliwood's promotion issues are comparable to Roy's. Getting a horse is great, but only if you have the chance and stats to do something with it. Which Marcus, Sain, Lowen, Kent, and even the fragile and puny Isadora all have.

I like Veyona from RD 3-3. The one non-generic Druid in the whole game, and she isn't a bad person. She calls out on the arrogance of the Senators she serves, but as a loyal soldier, she on her honor defends the supply camp. Teodor, the boss of the tediously difficult to get to 19xx in FE7 is cool since he builds on the lore of Dark Magic which I so love in the GBA trio.

Didn't Forseti!Lewyn also teach Arthur/Amid magic? He did instruct August on top of this. Forseti loves Jugdral and wants to defend it from his own kind's failure to notice Loptyr had ran off and conquered another continent, inflicting terrors on humans who had nothing to do with dragonkind. I like to hypothesize that Forseti didn't completely replace Lewyn right away, since otherwise Forseti was the one who probably conceived Coirpre, Tine, Phee, maybe the other younger kids. Lewyn was given a little more time to be himself, but then Forseti took over as time passed and went globetrotting to set the stage for Operation: Jugdral Liberation. If we assume the 99% canon LewynxErinys pairing, I like to imagine that Lewyn told Erinys about his death, resurrection and possession before he left Silesse. She probably accepted it, was thankful for the time she got with her beloved husband, and then let him move on to his world-important mission and leave her. Knowing he was already dead likely added to Erinys's willingness to accept death, since her husband was already kinda dead. Obviously, he couldn't tell his kids. How would they wrap their heads around "Well I died years ago and have to prepare the world for liberation, so I can't spend time with you or mommy. Goodbye."? As for T776 Ced saying his father was the only one who could save his mother, he was just worshipping dear old dad. Not without reason though, since the other Magic-oriented Major Holy Blood users were Claud (if he is still alive- that is unclear), probably Coirpre (nope!- he's a little kid), Julia (nope!- she's an amnesiac kid), Saias (did even Lewyn know about him?) and the villains. Agreed, you don't need a hostage if you're winning with raw force. Negotiations (which include hostages) are only begun by the weak, the merciful, those inclined to save resources, and those who have want of the enemy once they are defeated (e.g. as economic pawns, as local tributary rulers in an imperial/colonial setting), and Grannvale wasn't any of these. Julius has less of an excuse than Ganondorf and Kefka you could argue. Kefka has lasers he can shoot the heroes with from the summit of his tower. Julius displays no massive area nuke powers despite being Loptyr's victim, the best he can do is Meteor. If Julius tried to singlehandedly wipe out everyone (though he doesn't have to, just the leadership will suffice), it'd take him a long while to do so. Lewyn not telling Seliph about the truth of Julia and Naga is done for no good reason. Why leave the amnesia girl in the dark? It'd make Seliph want to protect Julia even more knowing she's that important and his half-sister.

You just had to remind me of that one. Ugh! Umbriel, eat my memories of reading that! If there was such a thing as Anti-Supports in FE, that'd be one for sure, since Vaida only antagonizes Canas the entire time, they never actually bond in the entire thing. It's one of the worst supports ever, at least by FE7 standards: Yeah, Archanea's lack of character building dialogue is an issue, and so is a lack of world building. And you don't want to add the Weapon Triangle to it, since the games weren't made with it in mind. SD's addition of it just hurt sword users since they didn't change the enemy composition from being lance heavy with axes all but disappearing after the first few fights. And I really wish both games had GBA-Tellius Rescue to make ferrying Marth everywhere easier. Of course, some like little being said about the characters, since it lets them use their imagination more to fill them in. As someone who plays Etrian Odyssey, where your characters are all your creations, I can see their point (though I've never made actual backstories for any of my characters, even if I spend a while picking their names and artwork). How dare you say not every guy needs Say'ri, Anna, Tiki, Flavia, and Emmeryn S Supports! The girls deserve Gangrene, Basil, Walmart, Den'gue and Paris! And Lucina needs her dad's comfort- Vaike's that is! You will not deny me Chrom!Owain, Sumia!Selena, or GregorxFemale Morgan either! IS can roast over hot coals for making such awful decisions! (Sarcasm, obviously.)

It says something that when I was typing that that I forgot Eliwood. The most plot important lord in FE7 ends up being the least liked. This stated, he does have his moment of gentle outburst on Hellene. And then continuing to think on gentleness mixed with aggression, there is Tellius's Reyson, and he is generally well liked I think. His brother Rafiel is probably the least liked of the Heron siblings, partly because RD lacks good supports so he's never fleshed out, partly because he looks too elvish (to me at least), and partly because he lacks the chaotic stubbornness of Reyson or the young female vibrance of Leanne. Though I did like it when he consoled Micaiah in P3, and I like him and Nailah being husband and wife as the RD artbook revealed. Back to Elibe, I personally don't find Eliwood to be terrible, if dull in a number of his supports (everyone not Lyn, Hector and Marcus), and nothing new as far as lord personalities go. I like to focus on his Lyn Mode snippet of all thing, not the one where he heroically rescues Ninian though that CG foreshadows their marriage. But the one where he gets pledges of neutrality from the neighbors of Caelin in the heir dispute between Lundgren and Lyn. Diplomats should be respected, and rarely do they ever play a role in FE (except for one dying and kicking off RD P3, ...and Roy getting Etruria involved in the conflict with Bern- but I'll retcon this as "like father like son"), and I like typecasting Eliwood as one. He's a male Queen Elincia, and I like her.

It's probably a combination of factors. Both the perfectionism of Eph/Alm and the cliched naïveté of Celica/Eirika. The problem I think is bigger with Celica than Eirika, since we've had more female protags by the time her SoV self showed up. Lyn too is compassionate, but her irrelevancy post LM meant she never makes a mistake because she does nothing and therefore has nothing to screw up. Micaiah, I don't recall her going a particularly compassionate route, she loved Daein and wanted peace obviously, but I don't think she ever got shoved in the naïveté/pacifist corner outside of her Jarod sparing. And don't get me wrong, pacifism is fine to appreciate; I'd rather be labeled a dove (or heron to speak FE) than a hawk. Micaiah more than anything got Julia'ed in the Tower. Ike played Seliph in the sense he shelters the weak Micaiah/Julia in the Tower, despite her being the source of power necessary to defeat the ultimate evil. It's seen as Ike's climb and Ike's development with Micaiah sidelined between him and a little birdie, much as Seliph gets all the focus in FE4. But at least Micaiah becomes Queen of Daein (and it's Sothe who gets relegated to the consort role) at the end of RD, and curiously, all 3 of the Beorc Kingdoms are Queendoms at that point! The Laguz kingdoms are all men, but Nailah exists and the Bird Laguz who go to Serenes are forced into Vegetarianism (possibly Veganism). As for Celica and Eirika as men, if everything else about them was left as untouched, they'd be more disliked I admit. But look at Marth/Roy- they hate war, struggle internally over every decision they make, and trust everybody who comes to their cause, like the ladies, but these traits are seen as noble without issue, and counterbalanced by victory after victory they earn with no need of being bailed out. In FE6? I searched the word Marcus in the script for the first few chapters of FE6, only appears in one line in his joining chapter. His death quote suggests no retreat either. His Roy support makes one little mention of the word "advice", but otherwise involves no mention of him making strategy with Roy. Like in FE1, where Jagen had no advisor role, the duty falls on someone else, baldies- Malledus for Marth, Merlinus for Roy. A glance of the lines spoken by Merlinus reveals he never really suggests strategy, Roy comes up with them all. But which options should be selected? We've got five pasts, presents and futures to pick from. So 5x5x5 = 125 different combos to choose from. I wouldn't pull if the girl wasn't a Strong Truth-Seeker Merchant's Child. And the guy just has to be a Diverse Humanitarian Farmer's Child or a I boycott Heroes completely! Should we just make the Krises have Dissociative Identity Disorder? It was prophesied their life's meaning would be murdering people, so they were named after a knife.

I get that. I totally understand critiquing out of love. Absolute loyalty = the one true definition of patriotism is soooooo wrong. Not to say radical destructive opposition is right either. Somewhere in between! Integrity and Reality didn't hold back the slightest. The first impression was overwhelming strong and I was just reacting to that, but even then I could see the understanding and appreciation in Integrity's critique. After all, why else does Fates get so bashed? Because it could have been so much better than it is based on the core premise.

First, I'm including a timeline of the reigns of the various kings of Rigel and Zofia. This will make putting things into perspective easier. As you'll notice, I made some revisions to the timeline. Since I didn't come to this history with every idea perfectly formulated, there is going to be some contradictions and revisions. Serfdom is one of those things which I'm thinking of dropping, since it's such a loaded word and I lack the familiarity with it that I should have if I am to use it. Peasantry is a much more vague word that can describe a wider array of conditions, including serf-like ones. This said for now, at least some of the Zofian peasantry is staying serfs for much of Zofian history, though not all. A blend of serf-slaves and free peasants might be awkward, but it offers the most flexibility. And here at last is the Zofian Monarchy's History, which I've broken down into sections for ease of reading. Pre-Kingdom - Lima II: Lima III - Sarion I Cyrano - Alorc: Milo I and a discussion of Rigelian Cultural Hegemony: Vasil I - Valenti: Vasil II - Milo II: Sarion II - Lima IV: