Arachnofiend

The main advantage of swords in literature is that it's easier to choreograph a duel with them. All of the real world reasoning for or against doesn't actually matter all that much - crossed swords have that romance to them that's more challenging to create in other weapons. Despite that I agree with the OP on swords being overused of course. I'd like to see more protagonists with oversized 2-handed hammers.

Canto is so strong that a mounted unit would have to be flagrantly worse for killing enemy units for you to consider an infantry instead. Get rid of it, give horses nothing to compensate.

Almost certainly fake - note that the leaker is incredibly specific on growth rates but has apparently forgotten the charm stat exists.

That's what I was thinking, yeah. It's possible that you could make maps with level brackets and the game would adjust the power of your characters to fit it (so like you can say this map is intended to be used by ~level 5 parties and everyone would be leveled down to match).

A Fire Emblem Maker would be a map-making tool and nothing else, I'd think. Likely an add on to an existing game where you can create "paralogues" that people can put their save file characters into. Being able to do all the work necessary for a complete game would be way too ambitious.

I can't believe I didn't realize this was a problem the moment I saw it but perhaps the clearest evidence of the leak being fake is that the leaker gave everyone's growth rates in exacting detail but completely forgot the charm stat exists

Yeah, she doesn't immediately step down after the war. Obviously it wouldn't help much for her to just bugger off before implementing her reforms. She still does step down, which is more than Dimitri can say, and a hell of a lot more than Byleth can say. Like seriously why are people so enamored with the idea of another immortal authoritarian taking the throne

You get it from Hubert's paralogue, so yeah. Technically it's also available in the final chapter of GD but I wouldn't recommend building around using it there for the obvious reasons.

Edelgard steps down and doesn't pass her title down to her children. Who's the authoritarian? CF is the only route where you don't clearly have a singular person on the top of Fodlan. In SS and VW it's God-King Byleth, in AM it's Dimitri. Also lol at chugging capitalism kool-aid when talking about a setting that's barely gotten to mercantilism

A zone of control that enemy units can't move through without attacking the Armor Knight would be pretty interesting, I think. Now they're great for dealing with Pass Assassins and other things that make it difficult for your squishier units to maneuver.

Not everybody needs a gimmick, especially in Fire Emblem where you have so much opportunity to take somebody out of their archetype with the support system. Marcus is pretty standard "old knightly adviser" fare but his support with Merlinus gives him some minor but amusing depth; a more standard RPG you may never have the opportunity to make Marcus of all people an expert on pastries. Basically what I'm saying here is that the key for "boring" characters to be more memorable is to investigate how they'd interact with characters their archetype isn't necessarily tied to.

Dimitri is a war criminal and should be tried as such.

It's better than my more cynical predictions; just being an expansion of the existing roster and story is great as far as I'm concerned, I was more worried about the quartet being donut steal OC's who get an irrelevant set of side missions completely devoted to them and disconnected from the rest of the narrative.

I actually got the impression that she was summoning those weapons. For a brief moment I was excited about the idea of a dark magic spell that targets defense...

All right well this is completely irrelevant then

There was a big 4chan leak that claimed Constanze was tailor made for one of the new classes, a faith-based pegasus class. Since this character is... clearly not that, and the other three characters described in the leak are men, that leak must be untrue. Basically I misspoke, this character is probably Constanze which suggests that the Constanze portrayed in the other leak isn't accurate.

The bigger the hat the better Stuff regarding the leak in the other thread:

Move Falcon Knight and Wyvern Lord down to the Advanced tier and Wyvern Rider to Intermediate, adjusting bases and growths accordingly. Just being a flier is justification enough to stop in that class and never promote further, they should not have better stats than foot units. Like there's a reason who they gave Bow Knights god awful growths

A more mild challenge run that could be pretty interesting is restricting yourself to canon classes only. Required to beeline to a character's canon advanced class (IE one they have a unique post-timeskip model for) and stick in that for the rest of the game, no certifying for any other classes. This would mean no master classes and limitations on quantity for powerhouse classes more akin to older games in the series - a Crimson Flower run only gets Petra for a flier, for example, since I doubt you're going to be able to keep Ingrid in Pegasus Knight the whole game.

Edelgard without Byleth can do basically nothing about the Slitherers. It's made abundantly clear through part one that Edelgard desperately wants Byleth on her side, to the point of it being a conflict with Hubert.

Edelgard's plan involves her retiring and not passing her authority down to her children. The Empire as an authoritarian system is dissolved and replaced by a civil government that anyone can participate in regardless of the circumstances of her birth. Bit of a step up in terms of following modern values over "the divine right of kings is good actually" that you get in the other routes. The closest you get to a route that is as positive for Fodlan as Crimson Flower is Verdant Wind since at least Claude's route also actually addresses the systemic issues in Fodlan's hierarchy. Dimitri sure as hell can't say that.

Did you not read the library archives? It's made abundantly clear that the church is the organization that really controls Fodlan. Her control is subtle but inescapable. Anyways Edelgard is right because she's the only one who's plan doesn't end in Fodlan being united under an authoritarian god-king

Well, given that this game is Genealogy of the Holy War 2 (Electric Boogaloo), clearly it won't get a sequel and will instead get a midquel.

I dunno, I feel like creating a Revelations route where everything is fine and nobody dies would just diminish the meaning of the other routes. Fodlan's an ugly place with an ugly history, everyone has too many genuine grievances for an optimism route with no consequences to feel anything other than empty.