Arachnofiend

So your rebuttal is that none of the things we learn in game can be ascertained as true. Considering the fact that that apparently includes Patricia's culpability for the tragedy, a testimony that was corroborated by another character confessing his own culpability, that immediately makes it clear you are not to be taken seriously

Consider the angle that Patricia was forced into marrying Lambert. What basis do you have for this claim? The story about Patricia's academy student life lover is told by Edelgard, and the man in question is quite explicitly Ionius. Coupled with the fact that, after learning of her culpability in the Tragedy, Dimitri remarks that his memories of his mother were not as warm as he had deluded himself into believing, the most likely explanation is that she loved Ionius and Edelgard and resented Lambert for keeping her away from them.

If the developers don't put any important information in those monastery conversations then suddenly they're a lot less interesting I'm not gonna say Crimson Flower was perfect, because it clearly had chapters cannibalized by the "need" to create a coward's route, but this conversation has clarified to me why people are so critical of it while they sing such praises for Dimitri's character arc in AM so I guess that was worth doing

I really don't think it's that much of an ask to try to see all of the dialogue. Hell, there was plenty of dialogue in prior FE games that you had to completely go out of your way to find too - a proper culmination to the Lyn/Bandits storyline requires you to get her to an A support with Wallace of all people. And that was a game where you could only get one A support per campaign.

Friendly reminder that Seteth burns books that are inconvenient for the Central Church's politics and version of history. How many smaller acts of rebellion have simply been washed away from history before we got to the point that people decided assassination is the only option?

If you only played the main plot and skipped the paralogues then yeah, you missed a ton of important information. Did you really not play the Hubert paralogue? And yeah you... really need to talk to people in the monastery to know everything that's going on. At least talk to the original house members. Do people play JRPG's with exploration mechanics and not talk to everyone? Wait a minute. Is this why people think Dimitri is all hunky dory after he "gets better" in Azure Moon? Did none of you talk to Dedue???

AM being bad is an unpopular opinion I have. I wouldn't be surprised if you like it, given that you seem to have just completely missed some story details of CF that are crucial to its themes. Yes, the Slitherers are responsible for experimenting on the Hresvelgs. The Slitherers provided support for the Insurrection, bodysnatched Arundel (with the caveat that he appears to have been a willing supporter of the rebellion prior to being bodysnatched, though that's not quite clear) and installed Aegir as a puppet with the specific purpose of leaving Ionius powerless to stop them from experimenting on his children. Edelgard did not want to work with them for all these reasons and more, and had to be convinced it was the only way by Hubert. Without the initial support of the Slitherers it would be impossible for Edelgard to remove Aegir and secure her own authority. It's a tenuous alliance, with Edelgard's faction absolutely disgusted with the existence of the Slitherers and the Slitherers seeing Edelgard as an amusing puppet that they will be able to corral eventually. This balance is most clearly seen when the Black Eagles go behind Thales's back to kill Cordelia and Thales responds by nuking the city and a large portion of the imperial army.

We can't say for sure, though it wouldn't surprise me if they did. We do know that the kidnappings around Garreg Mach had been going on for quite some time prior to Flayn's kidnapping, and the Slitherers must have used those people for something because they aren't around anymore. Three Houses isn't a game that's inclined to dump information on you that nobody you're in contact with would know or want to tell you (other than that one guy in AM that shows up just to tell Dimitri information he didn't earn, but hey, AM is a bad route). Maybe we'll find out more details when Jeritza gets added to the roster, but I find it unlikely that the Slitherers were just sitting around with their thumbs up their butts before experimenting on the Ordelias and Hresvelgs.

Canonizing Dimitri's route would be the worst way to go, honestly. They'd have to have him address the Slitherers, and as was made very clear in Azure Moon multiple times he did not earn the truth.

For clarity, that wasn't intended to be an unpopular opinion, just a response to the existing conversation at the time. They didn't. They experimented on Lysithea's family first.

Excuse me for not taking an out of context quote as unilateral fact. The bombing of Arianrhod is the one point in the story where Hubert is genuinely horrified, they were not expecting that response.

Unfortunately the game expects you to like him, and thus he must be judged by that metric. The worst part about him is how all of the women come around to him being not so bad despite his behavior barely if at all changing. If he was an antagonist you got to stab that would be a different story. Adrestia has poor relations with the church. Think about Rhea's behavior to anyone who isn't constantly kissing her feet and you won't be surprised that she doesn't care about what's happening in Adrestia.

He really doesn't. It's like, grow up dude, we all have crest drama, and you're the only one who decided it meant it's okay to be a terrible person

Seth. Not because Seth isn't overpowered, but because FE8 is so easy that if you're using Seth over any other character in the roster then I don't respect you

They somehow managed to combine every bad lesbian trope into one character with Soleil. Conquest would be a better game if it had no characters and your units were nameless pips on a board and that's why Fates is the worst Fire Emblem game

"The internet doesn't exist" is the answer, basically. Tracking a pattern would be very difficult to do for anyone who isn't a priest or knight in Garreg Mach, and it's well established how blindly loyal Rhea's followers are. Jeralt was in the best position to figure Rhea out but he didn't get to the point of suspecting her of anything until his wife's death. Add on the fact that the church actively burns historical records and violently suppresses people who question Rhea's authority and it'd be pretty hard for anyone to realize that they've had the same pope for a millennium.

I'm not sure if I'd trust IntSys to do something other than medieval Western Europe. They've had mixed results with portrayals of other cultures in past games. In a perfect world where I can assume they'd do a great job with it though, it'd be cool to see a Persian Fire Emblem that takes some notes from Zoroastrianism. Similar themes to what Fire Emblem has always ran with but would make for a wildly different aesthetic.

Lorenz is a good guy and Sylvain is an absolute trash heap of a person, and the only reason Sylvain is a more popular character is because he's physically attractive.

Hero is pretty heavily out-classed by both Assassin and Swordmaster, I agree. I'm pretty sure anyone who wants Vantage also wants Wrath, and if you want that combo it's much better to go Mercenary->Warrior than Warrior->Hero. Hero doesn't really have a leg to stand on.

I'd guess Jeritza is going to join the group right before the timeskip. Given that we're getting him for free, I suspect he was originally intended to be the guy Crimson Flower gets instead of Seteth and was cut for time.

"Drop of a hat"? The town was destroyed because the Slitherers dropped a nuke on it as a way to tell her and Hubert not to screw with them. Killing Cornelia was an error; the entire point of that chapter is to display how she's not ready to directly confront Thales, and she pays for it by having to lie to her friends again and cover up what Thales has done for him. I don't know where people get this impression that Edelgard can just do what she wants, because she can't. Right now her entire regime is predicated on Thales's support - she wouldn't have even been able to depose Aegir if he wasn't in favor of it. It's only after the war, when she has developed her own resources and allies independent of the Slitherers, that she can break away from him.

I think you're actually underestimating the genius of the Hubert/Hanneman support by giving Hanneman too much credit. Count Vestra is one of many characters in Three Houses that we never meet personally and only know from the secondhand testimony of other characters. Hanneman's perspective on Vestra is perfectly valid... but, you must remember, so is Hubert's. Hanneman's understanding of Vestra as a person is from a time before the Insurrection - an event like that can change a person, and Hubert certainly thinks it did. It's entirely possible that Vestra's participation in the Insurrection of the Seven was a galaxy brain play to sacrifice himself in order to ensure Edelgard's later rise - knowing what we know of his son, this sort of strategy is entirely within the Vestra family repertoire. But it's also possible that he disapproved of Ionius's policies and rebelled of his own volition. Neither Hanneman nor Hubert can ever know which is the truth. And Hubert's gonna have to live with that.

Anna will have a strength in every skill, except Reason which she has a weakness in

Is it known exactly how Stealth works? I remember Shade in PoR was basically useless since it was only a random chance to not get targeted and could not be relied on, but people seem to think more highly of Stealth. Does it always bump the Assassin to the bottom of the priority list for enemy units?

Crimson Flower's actually kinda hard to miss if you're playing the game the way you're supposed to. "Read the support conversations as they unlock" and "talk to the students in your own house every month" are things I'd expect most people to do on their blind run.