[Good classes for Byleth?]

I did Falcon Knight and ended on Enlightened One for my first playthrough. My Byleth ended up absurdly strong and fast so I'm going to work on Mortal Savant this time. I think a Wyvern Knight would be really fun though.

[What are your thoughts on Edelgard? *SPOILERS*]

I've completed Blue Lions and I don't have a blind hate for Edelgard. I remember declaring that both Rhea and Edelgard are crazy to my husband after meeting them though. I avoided a lot of story details before release so I was genuinely surprised at the 180 her character did for me. I did not expect her to be cast as a villain, kinda figured she would be a Corrin who could do no wrong. 

With that being said, I loved hating her during the Blue Lions route. I felt outside of her route the game still gave her depth as a bad guy which is good considering how one dimensional Hubert and the TWSITD are. I am bewildered that there are people who think she's a good romance. While Edelgard may not have wielded the dagger she was still responsible for Jeralt's death and the death of a lot of innocent civilians. She even states as much and now that I'm playing the Black Eagles route she hints at these transgressions during the school phase. If it weren't for my desire to see what is basically the "Villain" route I would never pick her or the church's side.

[So ends my ironman run, perfect until "Foreign Land And Sky".]

2 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

I was trying the same thing on the Blue Lions route. Certain events happened that were a little more drastic than an ambush spawn that resulted in Byleth's death (mercifully no one elses).
Go figure if you fail the mission, a divine pulse is forced instead of the game over screen. I used this to restart the mission as if I got a game over but without moving my units to more advantageous starting positions given what I'd learned. Long story short, between this and a certain map prior I learned the game really loves to throw curve-balls with mission objectives and force a divine pulse. As for what curve balls I've encountered I'll put them in a spoiler tab.

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The two maps I'm talking about are one post time-skip where Rodrigue appears and the mounted boss and his goons all go straight at him. Which is a big "fuck you" to anyone who hadn't decided to arbitrarily head the way with more damage tiles first.

The other map, "The Blood of The Eagle and Lion", tricks you into thinking it's a rematch of "The War of the Eagle and Lion", but if you take control of the hill with the ballista (something you'll want to do), you'll suddenly find it ablaze with all your units on it in the "disturbed" condition. Plus reinforcements will appear from not one but TWO directions.

In both cases the game literally baits you into doing something, and then royally wrecks you for it. There was  a third instance in the next chapter that might have also qualified if Ingrid didn't happen to be the only unit in range and take zero damage from the untelegraphed revelation that there's machines that automatically attack with long range magic. But as it went, it didn't matter to my run at all.

So long story short, I've been semi-fortunate in that I haven't actually lost anyone to bullshit curveballs, But now the game has me paranoid about them.

As far as the Blood of the Eagle and the Lion: I was frustrated at first but in retrospect I actually like that the developers had the enemy make a smart tactical decision overall. I learned that conventional tactics that worked in the school phase will be punished in the later chapters and that has saved me from a lot of bull ambushes and traps later on.