lenticular

Weirdly, I had no idea that Arvis's father was called Victor, since I've never actually played Genealogy (or any of the other non-localised games). I actually noticed you had the two Ignatiuses on your list, which made me think about how Ignatz was a variant form of Ignatius, which then made me remember that his family name was Victor, which then made me think "wait a minute, wasn't there a bandit twin called Victor as well?" At which point I went to the wiki to double check my memory and was met with a disambiguation page. Actually, thinking about it, the wiki's list of disambiguation pages might be a good place to look for more duplicated names. Let's see, apparently there's an Eve in Genealogy and an Ève in Engage, a Liza in both Genealogy and Shadow Dragon, and a Mueller in both Thracia and Gaiden/Echoes. Yeah, not going to even pretend that I know who any of those are. (Well, OK, I know Ève because Engage is still fresh in my mind.) But oh, this one is cool. There's a boss called Jamil in Gaiden/Echoes, and another boss called Jamil in Awakening, and the Awakening map is basically a remake of the Gaiden one. That's cool and I can't believe I'd not noticed it before.

Even aside from that, even if her eyes and her voice didn't both change, it still makes them all look like a bunch of incompetents. They know that Veyle can potentially have a sudden shift in personality at any moment, and yet for some reason they haven't taken even the most basic precaution against it. Given that the two Veyles don't share memory, it would be trivially easy to have some sort of passcode as confirmation for unusual orders, but apparently Veyle went to the school of idiot supervillains that demands immediate unquestioning loyalty above operational security or good sense.

I still can't entirely make my mind up about the class system overall. On the one hand, it definitely has a lot less depth than the systems of Three Houses or Fates, with a lot fewer interesting decisions to make. But on the other hand, sometimes, I kind of like that. It can be nice to just worry about beating the map rather than having to factor in support points or class xp or whatever else. But on the gripping hand, if they wanted to just make a really simple system, they probably should have simplified further. There are just too many points of friction for it to feel like it has any sort of elegance. Reclassing before promoting being a trap, the way learning weapon proficiencies is tied to Emblems, having recommended levels for each chapter be completely meaningless numbers. It just doesn't come together properly. In my current game I'm running Alear as a staff-bot with convoy access, and even when I don't have to worry about inventory slots, I still haven't had cause to use a Fracture staff yet (though I do like the idea of using it against the wyrms). It's not just competing for an inventory slot but also for the use of a turn. And a lot of the time, there's no functional difference between "Fracture and then attack" and "attack, take damage, then heal it back with Mend". Except that you have to hope Fracture hits, and you don't get the chance of the enemy missing, etc. Sure, the exact circumstances could come up sometimes, but only rarely. It also doesn't help that Maddening bosses are immune to being broken. As enemies who take multiple hits to kill and can dish out a lot of damage in return, they'd be prime targets to hit with Fracture, but the game doesn't allow that.

Having one extra Emblem per game would have been good for keeping fans of different games equally happy, and could also have been an interesting way of preserving game balance. What if, instead of finding additional tchotchkes for the additional Emblems, we instead discover that each ring carries two different Emblems, but only has the power to summon one of them at a time. So, we can summon Marth or Tiki but not both at once, Lyn or Hector but not both at once, and so on. Then towards the end of the game, we could find some macguffin that would let us separate the Emblems so we could run whichever ones we want. That way, the DLC would be more about adding different choices and less about just raw power creep. Got to admit, if Emblem Tiki started talking about Fortuna and TikiIsMyWaifu, that would certainly increase the value proposition of the DLC for me. More seriously, though, if they had wanted to rep Warriors in some way, I imagine they'd have gone with Shez over Rowan and Lianna. Both for being more immediately topical, but I also feel that they're more popular (not that I've played either of the Warriors games, though, so maybe I'm wrong there?).

I largely agree with this. I think that if they wanted a palette cleanser after Three Houses, they could have gone with a simpler story or a lighter story, but that doesn't mean getting rid of any semblance of worldbuilding or internal consistency. Instead, they seem to have doubled down on exactly the wrong elements. I'm thinking of things like the various villain death scenes which were overwrought and filled with cheap attempts at pathos, but were ultimately meaningless because they weren't backed up by anything that had gone before. It felt to me as if they were trying to have the trappings of a grand epic tragedy but without any of the weight behind it. Whereas what I personally want is to have the foundations of strong worldbuilding and consistent character motivations, but I don't much care if the plot laid on top of the foundations is a simple one.

I've found that there isn't a huge amount of competition for Master Seals because I end up not keeping all that many early-game units for the long term. In my first play through, I kept Alear, Céline, Chloé, Louis, Yunaka, and Ivy. And while I didn't know to early promote then, that would only have been 4 characters wanting Master Seals before chapter 10. In my second game, I've kept Alear, Jean, Anna, Citrinne, Lapis, Diamant, Amber, Jade, and Zelkov. Which is more people, but that's partly because I was deliberately making myself pick units I didn't use in my first game. And even then, I was only one Master Seal short by the time Kagetsu shows up. Yes, Master Seals are a resource and they are in finite supply and that does need to be considered, but I've never really felt an actual scarcity of them. Thinking about things, I wonder if there's a useful comparison to be made to Radiant Dawn here. In RD, the units of the Dawn Brigade are pretty much outclassed by the units from the Greil Mercenaries, so it's uncommon to bring a big contingent of Dawn Brigade units to the Tower. So the way that I (and I think many others) approach the Dawn Brigade is to pick a small number of people I'm going to use long-term, show them favouritism where I can, but otherwise just focus on whatever gets through their maps. Who cares if Nailah is stealing xp from Edward if I'm going to be benching Edward soon anyway? I think that a similar mentality can be applied to early characters in Engage, although not quite to the same extent. But in general, I think that you absolutely should be showing favouritism to a few early units and then drop the rest. Which is a shift in mentality from most FE games where there's a good argument for keeping more early units with you until the end of the game.

Trying to think of specifically male divisive characters, and while @Fabulously Olivier has mentioned Sylvain already, I'll add that most characters who fit into the general "womaniser/flirt/philanderer/lady's man" character archetype tend to be at least somewhat divisive. So Gatrie, Virion, etc. Not anywhere near the level of some of the other names in this thread, but it's there. I'll also add joke characters as another broader category. Oliver is the one that's really coming to mind for me, but there are probably others too. With joke characters, the big bone of contention is always going to be whether the joke lands for you or not. If you find Oliver's schtick funny, then he's a fun comic relief character. If you don't find it funny then he's just an objectively terrible person who's getting the world's least earned redemption arc.

Oh, good call. I think she's probably still pretty divisive, but Radiant Dawn is sufficiently old and established that it's not likely to inspire hot takes and active flame wars any more. I could easily see that being the case, yeah. Especially with Hortensia. I'm not a fan myself, but I can see why she might appeal to others. She's very turned up to 11. I mean, female Corrin did just win CYL recently, so she obviously has a pretty sizable fanbase. Really? Huh. Interesting. I don't think I've seen much in the way of disagreement about Shinon. The consensus that I normally tend to see is that he's a scumbag but that he's well written in that role. Are there other prevailing views on him?

Victor, father of Arvis; and Victor, twin brother of Vincent; and Ignatz Victor, painter from Leicester (whose first name is also a variant on the two Ignatius already on the list). Layla, singer in Cyrkensia; and Leila, Ositian spy. Eleanora, mother of Eliwood; and Eleonora, actress and mirage master. (These are also related to Elen, Elena, and Lena, but are even more similar than any of them.) Nina, daughter of Niles; and Nyna, princess of Archanea. Nino, adopted daughter of Sonia, is also related. Dorothy, Etrurian archer; and Dorothea, Adrestrian songstress. Oliver, corrupt Begnion senator; and Olivia, Feroxi dancer. Louise, wife of Pent; and Louis, retainer to Céline. Grégoire, Count Varley; and Gregor, Feroxi mercenary. Mark, advisor to Lyn; and Marcus, advisor to Eliwood (why were these two in the same game?); and Marcia, Begnion pegasus knight. (Marth is also related to these three, albeit more distantly.) Cecil, Altean knight; and Cecilia, Etrurian general. Felix, frenemy of Dimitri; and Felicia, Corrin's maid. Jakob, Corrin's butler; and Jake, Anna's sweetheart. You already have Leo and Leonardo, but there's also Leonie, Jeralt's fangirl, as a gender variant. And finally... Petra, Brigid princess; and Shanty Pete, legendary pirate.

This is inspired by the Camilla thread. It's no surprise to anyone who's spent more than 3 seconds around the fandom that Camilla is a divisive character. She is undeniably popular, but she is also undeniably widely hated. So I was thinking, which other Fire Emblem characters fit that same pattern? Who else do you fear to even mention in case it derails the conversation and turns into a flame war? I'm thinking that Edelgard and Rhea fall into the same category, as do all avatar characters. I'm sure I'm missing some, though. Who else is there? Who's the most polarising character from each game? (Note: this is not the thread for talking about why these characters are the best/the worst, and is definitely not the thread for talking about how the people who hate them/love them are objectively terrible people. This is the thread for acknowledging that some characters are simultaneously both popular and unpopular and it's right and good that different people are able to have different opinions. Be respectful!)

Yes, but great knights are cavalry.

Agree entirely with this. I'll also add that I always get RSI issues whenever I play any game that makes me regularly switch between buttons and stylus. I have to be really careful to monitor how long I'm playing for, or I kill my hands. As for my favourite, I'm not sure. There's never really been a Fire Emblem game where I've felt that they've got everything about the UI just right. The trend over time has been towards improving interface, but there are always just a few niggles stopping me from really embracing any of them fully. So, I really like that Engage gives extra prominence to derived stats, but at the same time feels like it needlessly obfuscate base stats (eg weapon might). I'm most comfortable with the UI for Three Houses, but I think that's just because I've played it the most and have grown most used to its quirks.

Yeah, it's weird. Despite having played mumble hundred hours of Three Houses, I've never used male Byleth. So when he shows up in Engage, I don't have any sort of connection to the guy. Whenever I see him, it literally takes my brain a second or so to remember "oh, right, that's Byleth". And honestly, Corrin is almost as bad. While I did use female Corrin, none of my incarnations looked remotely like the canon version, so again, I just don't have a connection in the same way that I do for the other returning characters. I don't know what they really could have done differently, though. Having the player choose would probably have been super clunky. Where would you even put the option? I suppose it could have just been a menu option, but then most people wouldn't even ever see it. And given the extra work and costs involved, I can see why they just did what they did. Though, from memory, I believe that the Kris ring doesn't? Which is a weird choice, to acknowledge the choice on one bond ring but not another. I'm glad they didn't do this. Armor units in Engage are in the best place they've been for a long time, and minimum damage would really hurt them. Not so much for the damage itself, but because it would get rid of the thing where secondary effects only trigger off non-zero damage. Being able to avoid poison and (for great knights) break by having high enough def is a part of what keeps them viable.

He also has a lot less flexibility in what he can reclass into. Which may or may not be relevant depending on your party composition and the role you need him to play. If you're looking for any sort of lance class, then you're waiting until chapter 17. And if you want a wolf knight or griffin rider then he won't get there until chapter 18. Which doesn't inherently make him a worse unit, but does make him pretty clearly worse at those specific roles.

Rosado (Engage) and Rose (Binding Blade). Percy (Fates) and Perceval (Binding Blade). Zephia (Engage) and Zephiel (Elibe). (OK, that last one is slightly sketchy since apparently one is derive from "sepia" and the other from "zephyr", but they certainly look close enough to me.)

I don't have much to say on the subject of Lapis vs Chloé vs Kagetsu (or vs Céline, or vs Merrin, or whoever else), but I will just say this. In my first time through the game (hard/classic), I used Chloé (griffin knight, Lyn) and she ended up being my single best unit. My second time through the game (maddening/classic) is ongoing and I am using Lapis (wolf knight, Lucina) and she is shaping up to be one of my best units as well. So I mostly suspect that I'm going to end up coming down on the side of "both are good, use whichever you like best". I've not used Kagetsu yet, but from looking at his stats, I'm sure he'll be very good as well. This is mostly what I wanted to talk about, though. I think that, possibly more than any other game in the series, Engage really does discourage using too many units that are too similar to each other. That's because of the importance of Emblems and engravings to character builds, which are unique resources. If two characters are very similar then they probably ideally want to have the same Emblem and the same engraving, and only one of them can have it. Like, let's say that we decided to build a dodge tank using Chloé. We promote her into any class with a +20% speed growth, we give her Lyn's Emblem Ring, and put Micaiah's engraving on her weapon, then we have her inherit Pair Up from Corrin and Avoid +10 (or whatever level we can afford) from Marth. (I'm not saying that dodge tank is the best build for Chloé or that this is the best way to build a dodge tank. This is just an example.) If we then decided that we also wanted to turn Lapis into a dodge tank, then we couldn't repeat the same build on her. Maybe we pair her with Marth instead and put Lucina's engraving on her weapon. But she's not going to be reaching the same heights of avoid that Chloé did. And that has nothign to do with the inherent merits of the two units and everything to do with the builds that we give them. In a sense, I almost think that the best way to think about building an endgame team for Engage is not to think in terms of which Emblems we're giving to each character, but which character we're giving to each Emblem. We know from the start exactly what Emblems we're going to be using by the end of the game: all of them. (Admitedly, this isn't true for people who have the DLC, but even then, there aren't all that many different options.) So we can look at the game and say "OK, I'm definitely using Marth, so which character do I pair him with to best take advantage of what he offers?" In this paradigm, one of the marks of a strong unit is the ability to pair well with a lot of different Emblems. For example, a unit that will work really well with Eirika or Sigurd or Ike is easier to find a place for than one who only really works with Lyn. Flexibility is king. Of course, the big weakness of this way of looking at things is that we don't have a full team of Emblems for most of the game. And for vast portions of the game, we're needing to have most of our units fighting on their own, and they need to perform well in that situation too. This stops me from being wholly onboard with the idea, but I do still think that it's a useful lens to look through when it comes to planning for the late game.

It was the only one I had to retry as well. I tried it when it first unlocked, was horribly underleveled, and got destroyed. Then I went away, did some more story missions, and came back when I'd leveled up a bit, at which point I waltzed through it no problem. And it kinda feels like the map design lends itself to that sort of experience. It felt very swingy. If you're struggling with the map then it will swamp you with reinforcements that you probably can't handle. But if you're having an easy time of things, then there's no reinforcements and the map stays easy. The middle ground of "fun, challenging, but doable" seems like a fairly narrow window.

...and I literally just this minute realised that I said Zephiel when I meant Zephia. Sometimes, I am not smart. If their names are similar enough for me to confuse them when I'm not thinking straight, they probably belong on your "reused names" list.

I've also not touched online, but my guess is that Zelkov probably won't see much play. Given how popular Yunaka is, both in terms of her characterisation and her strength as a unit, I suspect that not many people are going to be dropping her and replacing her with Zelkov, and probably not many people are running two thieves either. It probably also doesn't help that his recruitment is at the same time as Ivy and Kagetsu, who are both well regarded.

On the subject of The Great Emblem Theft, I have very mixed feelings, though I think that ultimately I'm more negative than positive. On the good side of things, yeah, pretty much what other people have said. It makes sure that all (or at least most) of the Emblems have their time in the sun and really get to shine, and it also ensures that there's a nice constant drip feed of interesting new (or returned) toys coming in through the whole game. On the negative side, I don't like the way that it interacts with the skill inheritance system or the weapon engraving system. I was especially burned by this on my first playthrough when I'd made various plans for what I was going to do with skills, engravings, and reclassing. Getting suddenly told that all my plans were for nothing was deflating, and made me just not want to engage with the game's systems beyond a superficial surface level. But beyond that, I'm partway through my second playthrough now, and I don't really like how it's playing out there either. Having a hard limit for when you inherit certain skills wasn't something that I enjoyed. If I want a skill but don't have the SP for it yet, do I leave it until after I get the ring back, or do I grind for it? If I'm not sure whether I'll need a skill or not, do I buy it anyway just in case or do I keep the SP? Yeah, there's something to be said for requiring longterm planning, but even on my second time through the game, I don't feel equipped to make those decisions optimally. The weapon engravings are also weird. Since you keep your engraved weapons and have no way of moving the engravings to other weapons, that typically means that the best weapons you can get are going to be by forging your existing engraved weapons up as much as possible. This in turn means that getting new weapons is less rewarding and exciting than it would otherwise be. And I've already spoken about the negative effects on weapon proficiencies, so I'll not repeat myself there. I also don't think that I particularly enjoy the way the game plays when you only have a small number of Emblems. They're so powerful that they create a situation where you just have two or three characters who are flat out better than everyone else in your army. Which I generally find to be one of the least interesting ways to play Fire Emblem. Most games in the series are fairly easy to break in half by building one or two superpowered characters who can steamroll everything, and only having two or three emblems seems to be gently pushing me towards that way of doing things. On the other hand, when I have enough Emblems for my full team, that's encouraging me to really make use of everyone because if I don't use everyone then I'm missing out on so much. If we're looking at the Golden Dagger for inspiration even though it's Saber's signature weapon, it could have had Earth's Boon as well or instead. Let it create a food item that works with Favorite Food and you'd have the potential for it to cycle off itself, leading to an Emblem with very strong uptime on its Engage. I think it would have been fine if different Emblems had different numbers of weapons. Let some have four if they warrant it, or let others only have two if there aren't enough good choices. In general, I'd have liked to see more variance between how Emblems are built, rather than it always being three weapons, two Engage abilities, etc. This is one of those situations where the existence of the DLC makes things weird. If he's offering a smorgasbord of different relics to different unit types, it would be weird if the three house leader relics weren't among them. Until and unless you have the DLC, at which point it becomes weird if they are included, since that means they're doubled up.

Not many of the maps really stood out for me. They're generally well designed, but most of the gimmicks feel somewhere between "inconsequential" and "vaguely annoying". The fun is mostly from the solid game mecahnics and good enemy placement and tuning. And while this is very important, it doesn't tend to make for standout memorable maps that really distinguish themselves from what's going on around them. The only maps that have non-standard victory or defeat conditions are chapter 8 (which is still a defeat boss objective, but also has defend as a defeat condition), chapter 11 (the escape map), chapter 15 (the map where you pick up the Dancer), and chapter 24 (with the avalanches). Of those, I think my favourite was probably chapter 24. It wasn't a particularly difficult map (on Hard, at any rate; I'm not up to it in my Maddening game yet), but I had fun playing around the map gimmick, and the objective and gimmick were tied together nicely. It reminded me a little of the windy level from Conquest, except far less annoying. I also really enjoyed the paralogue maps, for the nostalgia. My favourites there were Ike's and Byleth's, just because Path of Radiance and Three Houses are my favourite FE games. They were all good, though. Even the ones from games I hadn't played were interesting, just to get the sense of how map design has changed over the years.

The big thing I'd want to do is get rid of the link between Emblems and weapon proficiencies for reclassing. There are big chunks of time when you don't have anyone available who can pass down various weapon types, with arts, staves, and tomes getting the worst of it. I don't think that this adds anything of substance to the game; it just creates some weird and arbitrary blocks to reclassing that I don't think are very fun. As for what I'd change it to, I don't really mind. There are lots of other systems that could work. But I think that my choice would be to have completely free reclassing, but make being synced with an Emblem give bonuses to associated weapon level, similarly to how natural proficiencies currently do. For individual Emblems: For Leif, I think that my proposed change to weapon proficiencies would make him a little better, so that would be a start. But, honestly, I think I'd probably just scrap his overall design and start over. I just don't think that it works. I've never played Thracia 776, though, so I don't really know what to suggest as an alternative that would feel flavourful for him. I think I'd probably nerf Corrin a little bit. Doesn't have to be much. Even something as small as reducing the avoid bonus from the fog Dragon Vein by 5%. I think Corrin is a lot of fun to use and I'm happy for her to stay very powerful, I'd just like to see it brought down by a notch. I don't think that Lyn needs changing. I agree that the chain attack part of her illusionary doubles is pretty weak, but I'm OK with that. The rest of what she offers is so good that having one aspect of one of her abilities be a little bit clunky (but still useful at times) is absolutely fine. For Byleth, I don't like a lot of the choices for Engage weapons. Aymr has turned from a fast-attacking weapon with Raging Storm in Three Houses into a slow and ponderous smash weapon in Engage. Blutgang is for Backup classes only, does magic damage, and has less range and damage than a levin sword, making it hard to imagine exactly who would want it. Rafail Gem gives Qi Adepts immunity to crits and effective damage, which is astonishingly worthless. I'd give Aymr the niche of being a smash weapon that can strike first (and cancels the opponent's retaliation if it works), I'd give the Feters of Dromi to Qi Adepts, and I'd give Thunderbrand to Backups. A common complaint with Celica is that she's decent early on, but drops off a lot in the late game. So I'd tweak her so that she scales better. Either replace Ragnarok with something else or keep it but increase its stats. Give more scaling to Resonance. Instead of having Resonance+ at bond level 16, have Resonance+ at 11 (still giving +3) and then Resonance++ at level 16 (with either a +4 or +5 bonus).

Can you not still talk to trigger the other conversations after recruitment? I remember being able to do that with Jade when I recruited her, but don't remember if it works for Lindon too. I don't hate the game's economy, it's definitely something that can be worked with, but the combination of "money always feels just a bit tighter than you'd like it to" with "there's an item in the dlc that will make your money stretch further" triggers all sorts of scummy business practice alarms in my head.

Changing the time of day also changes what fish can be caught if you go fishing. And changing the people hanging out at the Somniel is relevant if you're looking to give someone gifts to raise their support with Alear, and especially when you're eventually picking someone to S support with.

I think it's just a cheap attempt at pathos with no deeper meaning. The game had already done "villain semi-redemption in death even though it contradicted their previous characterisation" with both Marni and Zephiel, so I wasn't inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt at that point. It might be set-up for the DLC, but if it's supposed to stand on its own as is, then I don't feel inclined to try to find deeper meaning in it. That said, I do have a deliberately terrible hot-take meme theory: it's Donkey Kong. Emblem of Foundations: the original Donkey Kong took place on a building site, with actual literal foundations. "Burn us": he throws flaming barrels at Mario the whole time. Loneliness: Yeah, he kidnapped Pauline because he was a creepy incel. Can survive in other worlds: sure, I've played Smash Bros. It all fits! (None of it actually fits.)