timon

That's what I've been saying for a while, 3H's story would just make a lot more sense if it ended up in an alliance instead of war. It goes down that road because they evidently wanted to push "choices" and the strong feels of killing and waging war on your friends and former comrades. But if you remove all that jank, it doesn't really make sense for neither Claude nor Edelgard to not reach out for the other's help, especially since they have high esteem of one another (and while they're not best friends they don't act like enemies either). Hell, I'd argue the story would make even more sense if Dimitri too would join in, making his arc not only be his redemption, but actually him finding the truth and addressing the right people with his revenge. Also it would play into the shared backstory the two have, which was definitely worth more exploration. So yeah, the game is a conflict because the developers wanted to do a better Fates, and in all fairness it happened, but peace and rainbows would've been more sensible this time around. And there's nothing stopping them from still putting in tragedy and bloodshed, it wouldn't be a smooth alliance anyways. I mean I see your point, but also don't worry too much about it, it's really just "fantasy science". We see in a fair share of endings (mostly Lysithea's) even outside of CF, that people figure out a way to remove them, which obviously doesn't involve murder (since she goes on to live a happy long life). I don't know, they clean her blood or just use some new magic, who knows. Also I'd argue that Edelgard's point is not necessarily against crests themselves, but they have to be removed (or at least get rid of their importance) since they're at the very base of the nobility system, which is what she actually wants to overthrow.

Difficulty is pretty much not really a thing until the final maps, so I think the route one plays first will feel a bit more difficult (less experience and probably NG+). For me it was the case, I did CF first and it was easy, but the later runs felt easier, largely due to NG+ (those statues exp bonuses really add up). Also it's shorter, which means you don't snowball as hard as in the other paths. I'm either proud or very ashamed to say that the last map of CF took me 46 (yes, forty-six) turns, mostly because I was REALLY heavy on mages and the golems are completely immune. Also I didn't want to rush the boss so took the time to clear it completely (also not sure how much you can rush, there's a Fortify user who keeps on healing her). I can safely say I've never appreciated a skill or a class more than Terrain Resistance for my Holy Knights and Paladins, my god was it a grind. I also didn't know that dismounting would negate some of the Mov penalty (since the tile description only said "reduces Mov", not "reduces Mov for cavalry"), so it was even slower on the fire, it really delivered the pain and grindiness of war lol.

Agreed, I think to avoid having the DLC "route based" it will be us playing the past war with saints, elites and all that jazz.

Interesting post as I've also been looking at the historic inspiration behind the game. I do agree that it pulls heavily from Medeival Europe, but I think you can see a lot more sides to it if you ignore the geography but focus on culture and "flavour". - I'd say Adrestia is definitely the HRE here. True, they have an "absolute" ruler and not an election, but everything else fits in. The banners and the colors, the german names all point to it. Most importantly there's the fact that its very creation is tied to the church. - On Faerghus I agree, but I think the France inspiration is much heavier. France is the most typical "kingdom" in history after all and a lot of the names are straight up french, and France was known for its knights. That said I think there's also maybe a bit of Russia in there? Cold nation and poor terrain, plus Dimitri's name. - Meanwhile the Alliance feels a lot more like the "underdog", so I wouldn't put them as HRE. They're more of a small force that tries to get by, their names obviously reference England and I guess you could say it is kind of a "parliamentary monarchy". It's also a very small nation which matches England. There are probably some inspirations from arabic countries as well, looking at Claude's attire and the importance of commerce. Maybe greek city states? Doesn't fit with the time though. Also maybe a bit of Switzerland? Small nation with votes and lots of mountains, though the core idea is practically the opposite (with nobles at the top, whereas Switzerland never even had the concept of nobility). - Everything else I wholly agree, except Brigid. I think it's VERY heavily based on native americans, specifically pre-colombian caribbeans. Petra's timeskip outfit is very telling on this, almost explicit, but even her dialogue feels like your typical (not necessarily accurate) depiction of natives in movies. The religion based on nature spirits also seems to draw heavily from mainland native spirituality (eg. Sioux, Navajo, Apache, you name it). Through Petra we also learn of their deep realtionship with plants, animals and hunting which is all pointing towards those populations. Also there's a fun line with this interpretation, Petra says she had never seen a wyvern as they're not in Brigind, but she's good at flying and an amazing Wyvern Lord in general. If we say Almyra is Mongolia and horses are wyverns, then it's the same as the native american who became incredibly skilled with the european imported horses.

I'm pretty sure most of the information is in GD. Church route has a bit less info on the history but explains everything about Byleth. Anyway, if you want to know:

IIRC Dagda is a whole other land west of this map, Petra mentions how Brigid is between the two, and Shamir tells you to travel west to understand her origins or something like that. It's a bit weird though, with all of these names you'd expect the map to be a lot more relevant to the story. It's one of the downsides of this game, map variety is lackluster, the reuse sometimes is a joke (half the Faerghus paralogues are in the same exact walled city map!), and the regions explored are always repeating (bridge, capitals, arianrod). It's just another thing that points to development time having been cut quite heavily tbh.

On that note, where the hell is Duscur? They keep talking about it and it's obviously very relevant for the story, and yet I have yet to find it on the map or understand where it might be.

Also might be worth noting that it's in the interest of everyone for her to not go head first against TWSITD. If she were to do so before having the resources to beat them, it'd end up as the end of her dinasty and surely the Empire would fall completely under TWSITD (via a puppet). She basically accepts her role as "puppet" because she knows that rebelling before the time is right would cause far worse consquences. That said, after playing through all routes of the game I feel like it would've been a more logical story if everyone ended up joining together (not necessarily a golden route with rainbows mind you). And I know that everyone was shouting to have an edgy darky story, but for 3H it would be much better to have a more "good" story. You can still have tragedy and bloodshed, but if Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude joined together it would be a lot more logical. Not straight away obviously, but through the game they should become allies and join forces, since they share ideals. The only thing I'm not sure of in this case would be the place of the church, but it could keep its gray role, helping the protagonist but still being shady. Every path would still be different in the way it plays out, since students would change, lord would change and story would change, but instead of throwing in some random conflicts just because "feels", they'd actually work together since they care about the same things. Especially thinking of the alliance role here, as of now it never truly makes sense to war Claude (or for him to war the others). Think of CF, instead of having Claude randomly side with the Church have him propose an alliance or have her reach out for it. In Azure Moon Dimitri could find out the truth when he becomes lucid again and actually propose the logical solution to Edelgard. Their backstory and finding and rebuilding the relationship between the two could actually have been one of the main focus of the story. And it would've been a better story imo (surely less messy), trying to mend the problems between the lords and then fighting TWSITD (+ eventually the church) to achieve a peaceful Fodlan. Which would also be an interesting "circle story" (I'm not really sure what it's called in english) where you go back to the initial situation of balance.

I kind of see your point but also not really. You're drawing conclusions from assumptions, you're basically guessing Edelgard's plan. The thing is, in the game her motivations are mostly political and very "human". She doesn't really have a big problem against the religion nor the goddess, she has a problem with the church and the society. Her war is against a system, and yes, at the top of that system there's something that isn't human, but that's not the reason she goes to war. That's the reason TWSITD go to war. TWSITD =/= Edelgard. They have a common enemy, but not common motivations. What you're describing is what TWSITD are trying to achieve (eg. "manking domination" and obliteration of the goddess), Edelgard wants to tear down a faulty system, that's it. She's the literal meaning of revolution, nothing more.

If you get the axe don't worry about flying, a D is enough to pass the exam. That said I have a question of my own, what does it mean when enemies attack and there's a bar over the x2 or x4? I've seen it happen with Gauntlets enemies, they attack and supposedly should attack 2 times, but the x2 is crossed and grayed out.

lol sure, and what would the "untermenschen" be in Edelgard's view? Because all I see is political motives, there's nothing (and I mean nothing at all) pointing to the fact that she has a "hierarchic" view of mankind, or to a "brand of new men". Quite the opposite, actually. You're getting ridiculous mate, I get that she's a bit of a controversial character, but going out of your way to call her literally hitler or satan himself is definitely a bit much.

The lone fact that Assassins ignore Mov penalties and have 1 more Mov makes them superior. MS is a waste of time, garbage class with garbage stats. Every single character in the game has better options, and you are better off either going physical or magical. Swordmaster is nice when you start to get into Advanced classes, but it falls off pretty quickly. I've never used a single Hero, which just shows how useful it is. That said it's definitely bizarre (as the whole class system is), sword is present a lot up until advanced, even too much I'd say. Myrmidon, Thief, Mercenary, Hero, Swordmaster, Assassin. To add to this there's also Lord and there are Archers (?), Cavaliers, Paladins and Pegasi which all have proficiency. And then it dies off completely by endgame. And there's not a single sword focused character outside of Felix and Catherine (+ Byleth I guess), Petra pushes Wyvern more than Thief tbh, and I don't recall any other. Definitely one of the biggest mysteries of this game's class system, and it's weird because in the past I've always hated how FE pushes swords (even now I have my problem with the, again, sword bias of the avatar). To sum it up, I only ever use Assassins, the others are a bit of a waste unless you're Catherine or you really dig Felix's outfit (which is fair). Honestly the whole problem is just the weird Master tier, it shouldn't exist. Just bring down the mounted mages + Great Knight and call it a day in advanced. Everything else is useless, Falcon, Wyverns, WMs and Gremories are just straight upgrades that don't add anything except power. BowKnight has no place when you could give a bow to a Paladin, which would let Snipers stay as the bow specialists (and not be outclassed by the stupidly OP BK). MS is worse than most advanced classes so might as well put it there.

Earlier I was playing and there's one that hit me. I'm not even sure if it's a feature or a bug, but once you get to a fight with a boss the banging "boss music" comes in. And it doesn't stop. Ever. It's loud and obnoxious, if you're getting a hit into the boss and then clearing the map it's hell.

Well that prerelease topic's a throwback. Not that much has changed, but there were some big ones (Annette going from dumb loli to cute hard worker was probably the biggest change). Here's the tier, I did just playable + Sothis and Rhea though, the others are not so relevant to have an opinion. Thoughts:

Are we sure there are DLC classes though? I don't recall it in the summary of DLC content we were given. If they do though, Spearman, Lancer, Halberdier, Sentinel, whatever you wanna call it. I'm so tired of not having this option, lance infantry is literally the most common type of soldier in the history of mankind, it's so stupidly simple and yet it's been more than 10 years (I'm not considering whatever the hell Fates had, that just looks too dumb). Flying mages would be fun, but they'd be OP so I'm not sure. They could be interesting if they were balanced, but considering it'd be DLC it's most likely the opposite of balance (eg. broken on purpose).

Why use a Levin Sword when you can cast spells? Swordfaire is 5 damage, not enough to justify using it over Thoron, Sagittae or Agnea's Arrow. Not only that, but contrary to faith, raising her sword skill is a nightmare since she does absolutely no damage unless you use Hexblade (which can't double). Considering Dorothea's Str you're also never going to double anyone with the Levin Sword, especially with the speed loss of MS. I'd rather spam crit Thoron 16 times with 2 Meteors than having that faire bonus. In the meantime getting 10 Physics is not exactly a bad thing either. I guess it all comes down to your last sentence. "You basically lose out on +3 Magic, an extra cast of Meteor, and some Speed growth by going Savant rather than Gremory. That seems like a worthwhile tradeoff to me in exchange for Swordfaire plus a Levin Sword, Black Tomefaire, and better movement." This sounds like a terrible deal, the 1 Mov is the only thing you're gaining (but you're falling behind mounted units anyways, so I don't know how much that matters).

Do keep in mind that Seteth doesn't know as much as he'd like of Rhea's practices, nor does he really agree (the last chapters before the timeskip show that quite clearly).

Gauntlets are okay, they're not the best, but they have their good niche. I was more talking about axes, which are probably second to bows as best weapon in this game, considering the AS formula which factors in strength and the fact that enemies just never dodge.

You can. Go view map and then press - and - again (zoom out the max basically). For QoL, I pretty much wholly agree with @Florete, especially on buying stuff by pressing left. What the hell. And Byleth's supports are terrible, not only you have to either wait or run around, but if you want to run around you have to wait for the cloud to appear, and it sometimes just doesn't, and I have no idea what triggers it. Also the first explore after the timeskip is actual hell, you can't move a finger without stepping into a random A support.

I'm pretty sure it's french, so it's almost right the way they say it in the game. The "a" is a bit too open though, it should be more of an "o" sound. Don't really know how to write it in english, but think of the word "eau" (water) in french. The last part is definitely right though, I'm curious now, what language pronounces that "shay"? That said, on the topic at hand, I like Sylvain in the academy phase, he fits in (and he looks better imo), but I wish he grew up a bit more in the timeskip. Not talking appearence here, just personality wise. Iit's a war, some of his lines are completely out of place, and it's even worse when he does actually say relevant stuff, because it seems like he switches between two characters and attitudes at will. I was hoping he'd have more of a "difficult" timeskip and a stronger opinion on things, what with the Kingdom's situation, Gautier position, and Edelgard's advance on the crest system (regardless of route). Not a fan of the voice either.

FTFY

I agree that it's not convenient, but just change that student you don't want out of the goals of the seminar? Anyways I'd say seminars are pretty much worthless, they're based on the difference between student's skills and teacher's skills, so they stop being relevant at like chapter 3. Even more, the only seminar with an accettable combination is Seteth's, the others are pretty much useless (Bow and Reason, really?). They can be relevant again in the timeskip when you can have people with A+ or even S teach, but by that point you have so many activity points that just exploring is better.

Been watching some more supports, and some characters have really changed for me. Seteth has been growing on me again, the guy has incredible depth, in every one of his supports you discover a new trait or side to him. And the VA is one of the best in the cast, imo second only to Rhea's and Annette's. I've also discovered Gilbert, this guy is amazing. Again, a character with countless sides to him, a devout knight, an instructor, a mentor. That combined with 55/60 years of age which mean he gives a different perspective, and obviously his troubled past, and his present life plagued with remorse. Also I'm a woodcarver myself, it's a nice touch, and it gives him a "Heidi's grandpa" vibe. Special mention to his VA too, you can feel all the weight and tiredness of his voice, but he hides it behind a complex and honourable way of speaking. And those are the good ones out of the way, some have become worse, even annoying. I wasn't a fan of Ingrid before, but I didn't think she'd be this bland. Her whole thing is that her family's poor and she has to marry money. Which would be an amazing backstory, if it wasn't basically all there is to her character. Hell, at least in her supports with Ashe I was hoping she'd talk about something else (her dream of knighthood, which is also a bland thing, but at least it's a change), and she did. For a bit. Then she went back to the usual. Dimitri as well. People are going to want my head for this one, but he's fallen off for me. His character arc in BL is intriguing, but this is really all there is to him. Outside of that he's, like Ingrid, very monotone. Tragedy and knighthood all over the place, just the tragedy and knighthood. I already liked Edelgard and Claude better, but thought he was okay and interesting, now he just fell to "worst lord of 3H" by a long shot. And finally the biggest let down of this game, Catherine. What the hell. She has one of my favourite designs of the whole game (only Leonie's postskip and Dorothea's preskip are better), but that's all the good there is to her. Boor girl is usually an archetype I like, if the character is not just extremised into a male with a vagina, and she does this part good, sometimes we get to see her sweeter side. But that's it, everything else consist of "lady Rhea", there's nothing else to her. She has an interesting past, make it relevant goddamn, don't limit it to so little of her conversations. And the whole Rhea thing is terrible, for Cyril it kind of makes sense, he was took in as a child and so he views Rhea as a mother. Catherine was rescued as a fully grown warrior, what the hell is up with licking the ground she walks on. Shamir was saved too, but she manages to keep it natural (and she's also a much better character btw). tl;dr: I'm sorry that the first good looking blonde in ages had to be this thing. PS: special note for Hilda, she's truly an amazing personality, so sweet, but I have to watch her support "in doses", that accent is so incredibly grating. I can just picture her saying "oh my gaaawd" every 3 words. Which I guess is what they were going for, but still.

Do you have any examples of that? Not trying to be snarky, genuinely asking, because all I remember is "don't stand in my way, or I'll end you", that's the key difference. She doesn't go out of her way to obliterate others, she strictly limits the damage to the people actively interfering with her, and actually does all she can to avoid stepping over bystanders (she let's people flee from Garreg Mach before initiating the assault, she limits the damage in the alliance by striking the head, she waits out her attack on Fhirdiad to see if citiziens will be evacuated). Note that I'm talking about CF Edelgard btw, I think lords are better analised thinking through their own route. Their personality is inevitably completely different depending on the route you take, and only in their own there's enough interaction with them to justify an analysis. Just like with Dimitri, if we're talking about his character arc it doesn't really make sense to consider events outside Azure Moon, if not for added anecdotes.

The Hitler/Mussolini analogy is a bit much imo, I've seen it brought up a couple times, but she's more of a Ceasar or a Napoleon, she's a conqueror not a fascist. The difference is that once on the seat of power she doesn't exactly push repression, she doesn't only use force but diplomacy as well (those two things aren't unrelated btw), and the ideals she pursues are probably the opposite of fascism (which is basically wanting (and forcing) people to act or be in a certain way, she wants to tear down exactly that). And that's when you face her, when you side with her she's not even much of a conqueror, let's not forget (again) that she's not the one declaring war on Kingdom and Alliance, she declares war on the Church. Now admittedly even a brick wall could figure out that the (HOLY) Kingdom would take their defense, but as I've already stated previously, it's extremely idiotic (and a bit contradictory) of Claude to take the Church's side, he actually should lean more on the Edelgard side. But obviously he can't because the whole point of the game is a three way conflict. To answer other points brought up, the nobility system is not good, our own history has already proven that. "Protect the commoners" is not only a stretch (you don't even need paralogues, the main story is sufficient to see that it's not how it goes), but an excuse for power. And on a deeper level, security over freedom is just not a good trade.