Eltosian Kadath

One thing to note about that one is it deals holy damage, which is effective against skeletons. That is useful if you want to explore what is behind the boneyard next to fire link shrine.

Or Tharja is true to her goals at the beginning, securing supplies to creep on Robin, even if she has to lie and make nice to the manakete to do so. Tharja is irritated with Vaike because he keeps interrupting her while she is stalking Robin. I will also note that people taking a blow for Tharja is an oddly recurrent plot element to multiple of her A supports. Which shows that Faye came to realize the value of their friendship in and of itself, instead of recognizing an extrenal value to it, like people being willing to take a hit for her. Virion's is mostly just her assuming he has been hexed (or trying to hex him), and him going along with it because he likes being dominated by women. A lot of characterization about how the hexes of dark mages work in that one.

Before I made that statement I went through her supports to check that a majority of them did. The Tharja-Nowi support literally starts with her trying to talk Nowi out of a Talon so she can magically discern her future prospects with Robin Lon'qu-Tharja support ends with her admitting that she will be stalking Robin while they are married (although not marrying her will give her more time to do so) I don't know what you reading into the Virion-Tharja support, other than both of them being equally creepy. As for Vaike, it sounds similar to the revelation Faye has at the end of her Silque support chain, that despite her attempts to rebuff Silque, the friendship had taken root. Despite her acting like Alm is all she needs, it wasn't true, she needed the friendship of others as well. Also the Vaike support involves Vaike interrupting Tharja stalking Robin.

The main difference I am seeing is that Tharja has more garbage to sift through. The multitude of monotonous supports really skews things, as it makes the content of the two characters supports indicate the opposite of this assertion. It looks like the writer of Faye's supports cared more about Faye than the writer of Tharja's supports cared about Tharja. All of Faye's supports focus on Faye, whereas some of Tharja's supports spend a fair bit of time explaining how Dark Mages work in Awakening as a way to avoid having to write about Tharja's character. I don't think either cared that much, and both are just as one note, with the difference mostly coming out due to how much they felt required to write.

But a majority of Tharja support chains do involve Robin, and about the only note I am seeing added in the ones that are is that she is a Dark Mage. Honestly running through so many of them emphasizes how one (arguably two) note she is with how repetitive they become.

He really is, but once you get to the underside of the bridge, if you have a range weapon you can shoot its tail until it breaks off, which gets you a sword which has functionality similar to a Jagen (high base damage, but terrible scaling, which makes it useful in the early game, but falls off as you levelup, plus its difficult to forge...).

Sounds about the same for Alm, two girls crushing on him (or obsessed with him if you prefer for Faye). And once you factor in the girl Chrom actually marries into the mix, that brings him to 3, which sounds like your arbitrary harem cutoff number. I am looking, but beyond obsessed with Robin, former Plegian, and is a curse slinging dark mage, I am not finding anything else going on for Tharja. You can match that level of detail with Faye at least with, obsessed with Alm, from Ram village, and intends to remain a village girl.

You mean Havel The Rock? Nicely Done!

But these games do have an inbuilt assumption of monogamy in the mechanics, so why should harem behavior be ok in the games without canon love interests? Awakening does the same gross harem antics thing with Tharja being obsessed with Robin, Sumia starting with an obvious crush on Chrom, and Cordelia being obsessed with Chrom (but never canonically being allowed to marry him) the only difference is that the player chooses the canon pairing of their playthrough.

Sorry all, I have been a bit busy this month, but I should get the next update up later today (hopefully the date doesn't roll over before it gets up...), but here are some comment responses. Its not the only game where bows are awesome, the silly range they get in Echoes/Gaiden make them awesome in that game for instance, they are good (but specialized) units in Fates, I think they find a healthy niche in the harder FE game difficulties. I will keep an eye open for this mysterious shop. So far chapter shops have been underwhelming, and it iss nice to hear that this changes (at least in part...) The setup is so similar to the Ruby and Arthur map that I expected it to work the same with the player units being reinforcements at a later turn. The power of favoritism!!! Despite Clifford trying to stomp on her dreams, she will become a great knight in her own right. That ally and enemy disparity in mechanics is unfortunate. If the enemy followed the same rules, I wonder how differently it would play... All right, will do, although I hadn't read this before the coming update, so expect it in the one after. Offensively he is, plus he has more evasion than Ward, which sorta helps hi bulk. The door/gate location choke point means a thief only has to survive one melee hit, and with the turn system you could claim that choke point with one of your units if the computer doesn't acts on the removed gate immediately. Even if the door/gate tile didn't act as a choke point, Berwicks turn system would let you cover the thief with other troops mitigating this danger. That is something to keep in mind when enemies show up with those dangerous skills. Interesting...even if you can't see the enemy due to hide or increased vision range? Funnily enough I was thinking about the choke point in the opposite direction. If the enemy claimed that choke point I would only have one 0-1 range option to break through it, which you have less options to deal with than the other way around. The turn system mitigates the enemies ability to gang up on your allies as you can act between the enemies to heal, block space, or kill enemies, whereas in the FE turn system that would be a far greater concern, as they would have to take 3 hits without an opportunity to respond

Oh wow you started the whole series with 3? I wonder if that makes it easier or harder to understand the story... As for the voice actor question, most of them are people who voice acted the character before, and the voice of Hercules is the same VA as in the 1997 movie.

Also FE12 Lunatic isn't bullshit, just incredibly difficult.

Oh HAPPY BIRTHDAY DRAGGY !!!! Hopefully you can celebrate with friends

Marth's face showing emotion? That is completely contradictory with all of his in game appearances

The people who make good games, and the people that mandate terrible monetization are rarely the same. Although Path of Radiance also had split versions of one support which is different if a character was dead or alive, which would be another way to deal with the Leonie support. Path of Radiance had a far better thought out support system than Three Houses does... I feel like the way to deal with the time skip for supports would be to have a part 1 support chain that become bond supports in part 2, with a new part 2 focused support chain, with some support convos with some alternate lines based on certain bond support levels.

Its so easy to forget that Echoes does have boss kill objectives, after how rout focused it feels. Odd as this sounds I do think the number of turnwheel uses is balanced, if you go out of your way to avoid all optional encounters you can. When I stubbornly ended up doing that it felt like the right number, and scaled just about right to let me swing the disparity in unit quality between me and the enemy while playing fast... A lot of the grinding can be avoided with careful movements. Most Dungeons only have 1 mandatory encounter in them to fully explore them (Obvious exception for Duma's tower which has 1 per floor). Act 1, that would be Brigand Boss for the thief shrine, and one of the Bone Walker encounters (it blocks a doorway, and passing through that doorway triggers the battle) in the Deliverance Fortress. Additionally you can reduce enemy's spawning on the over-world by rushing the spawn points, saving any side objectives for after enemies stop spawning for the act (I think you can reset to RNG abuse the map spawns a little, but I am not an expert on that topic). When I went for Blitzkreig on hard I didn't bother counting turns, and out of a bit of paranoia started going out of my way to do this; I ended up having two non mandatory dungeon encounters overall. Especially in Duma's tower the Gargoyle encounters on the second floor are incredibly frustrating to avoid due to their positioning, aggro range, and the terrain, and after I finally hit the point that some of Celica's units would actually hit their final promotion (ignoring DLC), but only if I could pass by them again to reach the statue on the first floor I caved, I had resetted enough trying to maneuver past those bastards already...

There is a Duma statue in the game, in Fear Mountain Shrine, and interacting with it asks if you want to test yourself in battle...

Now that is exciting news...and reminds me I should get around to my next Berwick update...and I fell behind in Rubens LP as well...sigh....

Missed this edit, but Tatiana as a Duma Cleric would be a reasonable explanation for knowing the names of Duma faithful important enough to be in the presence of their god.

Yeah, but why? While I don't find most of these arguments compelling, I feel it would be a bit disingenuous not to point out an aspect to that map which some might consider unfair. The way the winds work aren't well enough explained for the player to understand what will occur in a lot of cases. The explanation reads How is the game determining the "nearest safe space" ? What happens when multiple units have the same "nearest safe space"? Which takes priority, a unit that reaches a space through the 5 spaces moved, or a unit that reaches a space as the "nearest safe space"? There are a lot of unclear questions that you have to learn the hard way.

As you point out there are plenty of minor bosses given names, and numerous enemies with class names even in boss roles (especially in Echoes), but only Brigand Boss has this strangely generic, but unique name. I will note that there isn't a Brigand Boss in Gaiden, he is an entirely new character added for Echoes. If all it was is him not having a name, then why isn't he simply named for his class, Brigand, like all the other nameless bosses? It is enough of an oddity to draw attention, and is begging for interpretation.

There are quite a few moments with the villagers where he advises stealth, so I am guessing he snuck to Ram village. Shrug. To really break thing with it in the main game you have to grind a lot more than I have ever been willing to, and even in the post game I beat it before any of dread fighters hit the point where they reached the level cap and it felt necessary for their growth. I kinda like it, as it shows us something about Alm. He jumped into that conflict before even learning the Brigand Boss's name, and had no interest in learning it after... Celica's goals get dismissed far too easily, in part because her task was impossible from the start, but also because it is a poorly understood one. From my understanding she is looking towards the ultimate cause of this conflict, and sees the depletion of resources caused by the loss of Mila's bounty as inevitably driving the two sides to war. Even if Alm wins it all, the increasing scarcity of resources vital to survival will make conflict (whether outright war or ongoing insurgency) inevitable, unless they find some way to deal with that root cause. Kinda interested, but when it was going around I was recovering from the second covid shot and even typing was taxing.