Crysta

I think the evil monster transformation and the last attempt to stab Dimitri when he’s being merciful likely does nothing but crystallize bad feelings versus Edelgard if they’re there up to that point lol Silver Snow generally sucks at everything it tries to accomplish tbh. Fans who try to sell it as some emotionally rife narrative about having to face your former student confuse me. She’s absent for a good portion of the post-TS story.

I'm fine with people being unbothered by it. I don't think every mystery needs to be solved or every question needs to have an answer -- I'd argue leaving some things vague actually helps keeping people curious. I don't think "it makes sense that this character behaves illogically" is really that great of a selling point, though, when having to tag along for the ride feels inherently stupid.

Positives - Main lord has an actual character arc and if you like him you'll probably thoroughly enjoy the route - Best White Clouds because the Blue Lions are the best integrated in that portion of the story - You have an actual conversation with Edelgard after her war declaration - Some of the best cutscenes - Most recruitables - Most paralogues - Narratively, I personally enjoyed having the flaws of knighthood/chivalry/tradition laid bare Negatives - If you don't like Dimitri then there's really not much for you here - They decided to have the retainer and your team tank's survival dependent on the completion of a paralogue, and remove him from a good chunk of the game - Has some of the most contrived story points to drive the plot from point A to point B, imo, and you shouldn't expect much closure in general... and why I consider it the least complete. Thales and Myson are accidentally defeated and the rest of them are more or less forgotten until they decided to slap a band-aid on this problem with Hapi's ending. Which just makes it a DLC-exclusive Crimson Flower ending that's locked behind one specific support chain. And haha if you're expecting to see Rhea again. - Second worst ending for Fodlan, imo ??? - Great first route if you intend to embark on more than one playthrough, terrible if you think you only have enough time / desire to do only one playthrough

Dimitri had not one but two surrogate father figures who tended to him at the expense of their own children, and he has a handful of close childhood friends who attend the academy alongside him. They didn't abandon him, either; they didn't know he escaped and survived the prison break, and he didn't return to the Kingdom to help the resistance versus Cornelia. And Gilbert does try to track him down.

I don’t recall their specific type of crests being brought up.

It’s incest if Rhea’s genetic material was used in the creation of Sitri. We don’t know if it actually was.

Why aren’t all waifus included? 0/10

I don't really love or hate any of them; that requires a passion and investment I very rarely feel towards any fictional characters. But disliking Sylvain is perfectly valid. He's a prick who is perfectly fine with charming women under false premises for his own personal (and temporary) enjoyment, and skates by with his piss poor behavior because he's attractive, privileged, and his trauma strikes enough of a sympathetic chord with other characters that they don't really treat like it's any more than a mild nuisance. Or they feel sorry for him. I encounter enough Sylvains in real life and I don't feel like I need him in my pretendy fun fantasy worlds, thank you. The other asshole characters are more tolerable because they usually aren't that transparently manipulative. It's one thing to be insulted, it's an entirely different thing to be lied to and strung along. And it's not, like, clever or entertaining manipulation lol Outside of him, I don't particularly enjoy interacting with Bernie, Lysithea, or Marianne. They, too, have trauma that explains their less flattering personality traits but it doesn't really do much for me other than make me pity them. I like Ignatz's character arc more than Marianne's, and he has less help along the way (though that may be why I like it more lol).

I always figured one limitation could be that Byleth could only rewind back a x amount of seconds and if there were too many complications to compensate for (where he was, how many obstacles he'd have to remove) there was little Divine Pulse due to change what ultimately happened. So while attempting to murder Kronya was certainly doable in that time frame, killing both her and Thales was impossible. But that's not how it works mechanically, as we all know. As for Thales interfering... I figured he did that more because Kronya being murdered meant she would leave a corpse that could be dissected and that'd be bad for them. The ritual she was used for later didn't leave a body, apparently.

It's pretty definite. I can't be 100% certain that you're not a cat with a keyboard - doesn't mean it's logical for me to seriously entertain that idea.

This is another case of "the most simple answer is the most likely to be true" and in this case it's "the rando soldier in the opening cutscene is not Jeralt". Why would he work for another, unspecified kingdom?

My point still stands regardless of his actual age. Rhea says he was a knight of the Kingdom.

Blood transfusion seems to be a solid method for conferring crests, if Yuri and that one village is any indication. The Major Crest of Seiros could have very well been pretty common, if not the most common Major Crest. Of course, it doesn't say that anywhere in the game, but sometimes the most simple answer is the one most likely to be correct.

Why do we need to make Edelgard more sympathetic? Beyond that, it sounds like they are suggesting they take away Edelgard's agency in favor of elevating and giving it to a side character they happen to find interesting.

Probably not, because Jeralt was from the Kingdom if I recall correctly and that didn't exist yet back then.

Mercedes got second in the BL popularity poll, losing only to Dimitri. Marianne got second in the GD version, behind Claude. Serenes Forest loves it’s nice healer chicks.

It's nothing new: in politics the enemy is simultaneously completely incompetent and on the verge of complete world domination and destroying our way of life.

Alois is a character you don't expect to like but he grows on you when you go through his supports. Like Lorenz

1. Claude 2. Shamir 3. Yuri 4. Edelgard 5. Rhea 6. Felix 7. Hubert 8. Lorenz 9. Alois 10. Dimitri Remove DLC and Hilda gets bumped to 10.

Nah, they won’t go for more than three/four routes. They had a hard enough time with getting this game done in time and three of the four routes are structurally very similar.

I stand corrected, then. I could remember four but remembering the fifth was like trying to recall the most unpopular boy band member and now I know why lol

Riegan is the leading House of the Alliance, though it's technically not a royal house due to the Alliance not having a monarchy. But functionally it is the same as a royal house, particularly because they have never actually been ousted from the position. Ordelia is a county headed by a count. She is not royalty. I don't even recall them having a spot at the governing table.

I'm aware there have been non-royal lords. Byleth themselves is a non-royal and arguably the lord in SS, but he is kind of exemplary for the circumstances of his existence more than anything else... and those circumstances lead to him having unusual (and honestly unwise) amount of political capital. Lysithea also doesn't have the charisma or strategic sense to really attract and hold together a group of ragtag commoners/lower rank nobles to lead an uprising/revolution, too, so it's not like she can go the other way either lol

Lysithea doesn't have enough political capital, status, or influence to justify being a lord in this setting. She doesn't even have a strong affiliation with the Church to justify replacing Seteth in SS. She was a guinea pig for the bag guys' experiments, nothing more and nothing less. It justifies her having an axe to grind, but she doesn't really have any leverage over them. So no. She's just a really popular character.

Distrust is certainly a theme, but like... all three of them ally themselves with other factions to pursue a shared goal in spite of not being 100% in alignment with said faction (Edelgard + Slitherers in every route, Dimitri + Church in CF, Claude + Church in VW, and an attempted Dimitri + Claude alliance in AM that was of course ruined in a contrived way). I'd argue a Church/Kingdom/Alliance counter alliance is actually pretty doable/realistic assuming everyone is sane lol Buuuut it's clear IS didn't want that to happen.