ZanaLyrander

Lol, from what I remember from Roman history, I think there were other problems I'd blame for their troubles sooner than I'd blame the idea of adopting children and raising them to be leaders.

Honestly, given the messed up crest experiments performed on her, I wouldn't have been surprised if Edelgard was infertile, though some of her endings from Three Houses already confirm that she's not. But yeah, Edelgard not having children kinda makes sense to me. Personally, I think she should adopt: the whole point is that merit and competence, not genetics, is what determines a person's worth in Edelgard's new system, what better way to demonstrate that than for her to raise a child/children to be strong and capable who have no blood relation to her?

Oh I'll definitely agree with that last part, I was only counting the non-unique sword movesets, Asura blows the others out of the water, no question.

It is weird hearing you dislike Swordmaster, since it's the same as Mortal Savant, which I consider the best sword moveset in the game. I admit, it took a little getting used to, but it's so damn satisfying, and extremely strong. But to each their own.

There is indeed a difference depending on support level, you don't even have to test like that, whenever the support ability activates, you'll see it in the upper left hand corner, and it will list its level there as well. If you only have C rank support, it will list level 1, even if you have level 3 on the adjutant. As for essence of element boosting Gremory's strong attacks, frankly Gremory's moveset is really lackluster, and they're better off just spamming spells anyway. I'm sure you can get some use out of their attacks, but they definitely have one of the weakest movesets in the game.

That's valid, I just would define F tier as 'practically unusable', and D tier as 'will struggle greatly', and frankly I don't think anyone in the game fits in either of those, even the worst characters can get through Maddening without much difficulty. D and F tiers would imply to me more variance than exists in the game, the differences between characters of varying strengths are less significant than that. On the subject of Ashe, I think Ashe can actually be fairly good. Between Death Blow, Heavy Hitter, a ton of Awakening boosting abilities, and Essence of Wind to juggle enemies, Ashe is actually really well setup for a Stun Gauge build. Plus, he's just generally handy to have around for his Lockpicking skills, not to mention Appraisal and Despoil. He's nothing exceptional since his stats are fairly mediocre, but he's got some really nice utility.

I will say, Lysithea may lack an Essence of Element, but she kinda doesn't need one. Augmented arts/spells usually have better AoE, but even unaugmented Luna and Hades have a massive AoE, and make for a terrifyingly powerful combo when used together, and Lysithea learns both naturally. I will concede that it is a shame she doesn't get Essence of Darkness, but she doesn't really need it.

Huh. Surprised to hear you rate Hyrule Warriors DE so highly. That one was good for a while, but eventually got to a point where it became extremely frustrating. I don't remember specifics, I just remember trying to unlock characters after finishing the story and hitting a number of missions that felt like ramming my head against a brick wall. I enjoyed Age of Calamity much more.

I hope we don't have to wait too long for DLC. I love this game, but at this point I've kinda run out of stuff to do. Not that it didn't take quite a while, 300+ hours is money very well spent in my book. But it's been a ton of fun. I can't really compare it to other musou games other than the Hyrule Warriors games, but for what it's worth, this is my favorite musou game I've played so far, and it seems quite popular.

Ugh, I've been dreading this one. I feel so bad for Dedue, this game did him dirty. Edit: It is interesting, I personally don't have a D or F tier, because this game has better balance than that, even the worst character in the game is totally viable, no one is so bad that they're not usable. That said, I'm kinda glad you put Dedue as D tier, because that's put him on track to be at the absolute bottom of C tier, which is where he belongs in my opinion. Dedue is viable, and he can be useful, but with so many other better options, there's really no reason to use him unless you enjoy him as a character.

See, I don't mind grinding, I don't mind investing in a character I like in order to make them strong. But grinding for spells/arts is kinda the worst sort of grinding because it's entirely random. You could learn the spell the very first time you use it, and it could take hours and hours, there's no way to know. But the odds of learning it each time the art/spell is used are really crappy at C rank support, so it's probably gonna take a long, long time. And until it happens, you won't even feel like you're making progress, because you're not, it either happens or it doesn't, and using it more doesn't make the next use any more likely to work. That's the reason I pay attention to who gets A rank supports with who in terms of arts/spells, because it's certainly possible to learn spells from a C rank support, I've done it many times. But I minimize it when I can, because it's fairly unpleasant. But with A rank support, there's no reason not to, it's easy and quick. Edit: This is, by the way, another thing that makes Shez and Byleth so damn strong. The two of them are unique in that they can form A rank supports with basically everyone, and thus can learn whatever arts/spells you want. It also makes the arts they teach tremendously easy to grant to others. Anyone can learn Dark Spikes or Aura without much effort, because everyone can form an A rank support with Shez and Byleth.

Yeah, it really does vary, so that might be valuable. Support level makes a pretty huge difference. Learning an art/spell at support rank A is effortless, if it takes more than one mission together, you got really unlucky. Meanwhile, learning an art/spell at support rank C is miserable, it can take hours and hours of grinding.

Oh boy, Hubert Edit: It is intriguing to me to see the differences in how we are ranking Arts. I can understand the perspective that Hubert does not natively have access to Luna or Hades, which for a Dark Mage is a significant drawback. But with A rank support with Lysithea, acquiring both of those spells is practically effortless for him, if it takes more than one mission together with Lysithea spamming her spells for him to learn them, I consider you quite unlucky. Personally, I consider any learnable arts/spells taught by units that a given character has A rank support with to be effectively in that character's learnset, because if you want them, you can get them incredibly easily, it just wouldn't make sense to me to dock a character for not having access to an art/spell that they can acquire in five minutes of work.

If you can find regalia weapons with the attributes you want, then that's your best option other than relics/sacred weapons. But yeah, if you find a zoltan weapon with the attributes you want, that's good enough, the difference is negligible.

This is it exactly. Ignatz is relatable because there are plenty of people who've felt pressured to do what's best for their family or their career rather than what they enjoy. In some sense, that's kinda why Ignatz has never been a favorite of mine, he is relatable, he's realistic, depressingly so. Seeing someone give up their dreams in order to make a more reliable living is kinda a little too real imo.

Not going to do a full analysis for Seteth, because I frankly don't care that much about him. He's only available in one route, and there are so many other route exclusive characters in AG that I hardly ever use him. Still, he's not bad. Nothing terribly exciting, but not bad. I agree with your rating, I'd rate him as B as well. Nothing exceptional, but very viable.

Most Sacred Weapons are indeed weaker than Relics. But Spear of Assal and Axe of Ukonvasara make up for it with effective damage (especially the spear, cavalry are extremely common), and The Inexhaustible is just better than any other bow in the game by a wide margin. The rest, you're probably better off with a regalia weapon or a relic.

The effective weapons like Rapiers, Horseslayers, Armorslayer, etc. fall off extremely hard over time. They only get +4 to might/durability per upgrade at the blacksmith, and that's with a fully upgraded blacksmith, while the Sacred Weapons get +8 per upgrade with a fully upgraded blacksmith. They are way too weak to be useful late game. They may be useful during a NG run, but in NG+ runs, they're simply not worth the investment.

Yeah, when people say the Sacred Weapons are weak, I tend to assume they're referring to specifically the ones that only have healing abilities. The ones that are effective against specific enemy types are very strong. The Sword of Seiros is only good for healing, but it's so good at it that it's worth using, it basically makes you immortal, especially if you have the crest of seiros. And The Inexhaustible is straight up the best bow in the game, and a strong contender for the best weapon in the game.

Yeah, and it's not a huge difference either, it's like... maybe 10-20 more might/durability? They're pretty much comparable.

It might be good for a while, but anything below Zoltan isn't going to be all that useful lategame. Brave weapons only get +4 to might/durability per upgrade (+7 with upgrades to the blacksmith), whereas Zoltan and regalia weapons get +5/+8, so they'll fall off in strength late game.

He used a combination of white magic (usually Aura) and his lance in the instances where he was an NPC, which I suppose he can certainly still do.

I mean, there is a literal conspiracy lead by those who slither in the dark turning most of his vassal against him, most of whom were already against him from the start purely because of who his father was. Blaming Dimitri for that hardly feels fair. And Lonato, while a good man, is blinded by revenge for the death of his son. Dimitri had good reason to believe that refusing to aid the church would lead to massive rebellion and instability within the kingdom. So he either earns Lonato's anger, or half the kingdom's anger, there was no way to satisfy both.

Honestly, I was upset back in Three Houses that Edelgard can't use magic as an Emperor, and it still bugs me in Three Hopes. They give Edelgard a very high magic stat, and a cool spell list, but don't let her actually use either of them in her unique class.

Sadly no. The way Three Hopes calculates damage is still incredibly vague, so evaluating the relative strength of various weapon attributes is extremely difficult still.