lenticular

Agree that pretty much any physical unit would benefit from having it, but I think there are a fair few cases where I'd rather use my combat art slots for something else. Everyone also benefits from having a movement art (with Reposition being the standout of the bunch), and there are also plenty of instances where I want a character to have two or more arts for their main weapon (eg, a generic damaging art and an effective damage art). So I wouldn't say "put curved shot on everyone" so much as "curved shot is a valid choice for everyone, so keep it in mind when considering your options". Dodgetanks are probably just too good and come close to the point where I'd flat out say that they break the game. If your goal is just to win at all costs, then dodge tanks are amazing. If you still want to have to actually play the game rather than let it play itself... well, dodgetanks are still amazing, but you need to exercise a bit of restraint with them. Manuela also belongs in this conversation, with her excellent speed and charm and her strength in flying and swords. Her drawbacks are her mediocre strength (same growth rate as Ingrid), her lack of access to Sword Avoid +20, and her late joining time. She's not as strong an option as some of the other units here, but she does the job and does it well. This isn't something that I would personally want to rely on for any build, especially not ones that aren't using axes and gauntlets naturally. My general assumption is that I don't want to make any build that relies on S or S+ rank to skills or mastering a master tier class, since these come online very late in the game, if at all. It's fine to include them as options for people who are playing on NG+ and/or are willing to grind a lot more than I am, but it would probably be helpful to also have a lower investment alternative listed as well. I would very rarely put Thyrsus or Caduceus on a Bishop. Not that they aren't excellent, but I always have other characters who want them more. Maybe if I wasn't running any offensive magic users. Or for a turn or two here and there if passing them around would allow for a very specific beneficial play. But as a general rule, no. The alternative way of looking at things would be to say that low HP strats are bad because they ruin Fortify. I think it's probably more accurate to say that there is tension between Fortify and low HP strats and that they do not have good synergy with each other. Be mindful if you're trying to use both. Paladin can also be a good choice due to wider battalion access. If you're using all your good flying battalions on others, or if you want a high mobility user of a gambit on a grounded battalion, then look to paladin. (And it's also a good choice for anyone doing any sort of challenge run where fliers are restricted.)

It depends. First, there are several classes that aren't on either your banned list or your included list: Dancer and the unique classes for Byleth, Edelgard, and Jeritza. Are these allowed, or banned? You also don't mention whether duplicate classes are permitted. You say one class per character, but not whether it's also one character per class. Finally, what level of difficulty are you looking for? Is it a difficult challenge run which will need fairly optimised builds, an easy one that wants deliberately unoptimal builds, or somewhere in between? Here's a list based on the assumption of no unique classes and no duplicated classes, which is leaning towards quirky off-builds, but not going into the territory of anything truly terrible. Byleth -- Fortress Knight Edelgard -- Mortal Savant Hubert -- Paladin Ferdinand -- War Master Linhardt -- Dark Bishop Caspar -- Hero Bernadetta -- Holy Knight Dorothea -- Swordmaster Petra -- Warrior Jeritza -- Grappler Lysithea -- Assassin Manuela -- Dark Knight Hanneman -- Sniper Shamir -- Gremory Mercedes -- Warlock If I had to pick just one, I'd say Edelgard as Mortal Savant. It seems like it should be fun, since she has a decent spell list, a couple of sword combat arts, and some of the best mixed-attacker growth rates in the series. I've never run it, though, because it's so hard to resist the siren call of putting her on a wyvern. But in a no-flier run, that isn't an issue.

That would be my opinion as well. As for the broader topic of elitism, gatekeeping, and the difference between old school and modern FE... Well, elitism and gatekeeping both suck, but it also frustrates me when I see the terms getting over-used. For instance, this is elitism: "obviously we're only considering lunatic classic here, because other difficulties just aren't worth playing." Whereas this is not elitism: "I prefer classic mode, because I like the challenge." Similarly, this is gatekeeping: "If you haven't played every game in the series at least twice, then you have no right to call yourself a fan." But this is not gatekeeping: "I loved the old games in the series, but don't really enjoy anything from Awakening onward." And let's be honest here, the toxicity goes both ways. I've definitely seen elitism and gatekeeping from old-school fans directed at newer fans, but I've also seen newer fans be awful at old-school fans. Implications that old school fans are inflexible and need to change with the times, or that being a fan of the older games automatically makes someone an elitist. When, obviously, no it doesn't. People just have different tastes and preferences, and not liking Three Houses is no more and no less as legitimate an opinion as not liking Thracia 776. In short: like what you like, let other people like what they like, don't assume bad faith from people with different tastes to you.

I'm hoping that they'll continue experimenting and iterating, because I don't feel that any system they've had so far has been quite right. The Fates system is my least favourite so far, but I think that might be more to do with its Supports system than directly with its reclassing system. I found that grinding up supports to unlock reclass options was just a lot of tedious busywork. Though I do realise that a lot of people would probably level the same criticism at Three Houses, which I like much better. I just personally find the busywork in Three Houses less annoying than the busywork in Fates. My own personal wishlist for a reclassing system: No busywork. Don't make me grind up supports or weapon ranks just to be able to go into the class line I want. Everyone can be any class. If I want to run Orochi as a Blacksmith or Raphael as a Dark Mage, then let me. Different units must feel distinct. In more ways than just their stats. Limitations on powerful classes. No more "oops, all wyverns" runs, please. (This is the lowest priority for me, since it's easy to self-regulate.) I'm not sure what the best way to do this would be. My initial thought would be to have Fates/Awakening class sets, but then also include (limited availability) items that let a unit reclass outside of their sets. Maybe they could bring back and repurpose old promotion items? So, an Orion's Bolt would let you add Archer to your class set, an Elyssian Whip would let you add Pegasus Knight, and so on?

My own personal preference would be for them to treat the casting of Ike as a blank slate. So, not necessarily either Adkins or Chun, just whoever would bring the most to the role for that one project. I tend to treat individual works as their own thing, so don't really care about consistency from one work to another. It's more important for direct sequels, but if it's just a reimagining of the same character, then having the voice changed up doesn't bother me at all. If there is a remake, it will likely have full voice acting at this point, which means that it will probably have more voiced lines by Ike than all previous appearances combined. I would like to have a voice that is right for this particular manifestation of Ike, rather than one that was right for some previous manifestation.

Yeah, I owuldn't argue that they're the most interesting dragon unit we've had. Except that that isn't a particularly high bar, as you mentioned (although the Tide skills in RD are at least somewhat interesting). Plus Corrin is most mechanically interesting when they aren't being a dragon. If you're going all-in on being a dragon, Corrin is probably even less interesting than RD dragon laguz. Agree with this. That does sound like a more interesting way of doing things, but I don't think it's what IS would do. But anyway, I've been thinking about this some more, and I had an idea. If I'm a dragon, I want to be a dragon. I want to breathe fire and watch the puny humans scatter before me in terror. I don't want to just get a small damage boost but essentially be doing the same thing that I'm doing with my swordsman. Except that would make for really boring gameplay if you could just have a single unit eat the entire opposing army. So, my proposal is that transformation should be limited but powerful. I'm thinking something along the lines of gambits from Three Houses. You only get to turn into a dragon once per battle, but when you do, it really matters. There could even be multiple possible actions that you could take on your one turn as a dragon. Breathe fire for big AoE damage, do a mass fear effect, massively boost your defense and grow to cover 2x2 squares. Or potentially even map-specific terrain effects like the dragon veins from Fates. You choose what will work best for you, but whatever you choose, that's all you're doing this battle. This could also be done as part of a world where literally everyone is a shapechanger of some description. Everyone gets one transformation per battle, for a gambit-style effect, but not everyone turns into a great dragon so not everyone gets such powerful transformations. Maybe there's a few lesser dragons, lots of beasts and birds, could be some monsters, maybe some other mythological creatures, there's lots of possibilities. And this would allow for the main character to be anchored within the world, both in terms of lore and mechanics, while still being somewhat special and unique. (I'd be perfectly happy with a main character who isn't special or unique, but that doesn't seem the IS way of doing things.)

Path of Radiance for me as well. I'd played SSBM, but largely dismissed Marth and Roy as being some Japanese exclusive that there was no reason for me to care about. But when Path of Radiance came out, I read a review in a magazine, thought it sounded good, and bought it. And lo, it was good.

Isn't that only in the translation, though? I don't speak Japanese myself, but my understanding is that the Japanese word that's used is closer in meaning to just "spear". Are any of our Japanese speakers able to confirm or deny? I like this theory, but I don't think it holds up. Cavaliers typically aren't a dedicated lance class. They're normally hybrid sword and lance wielders, so there's really only knight as the dedicated lance class, in most cases. And swords normally also have thieves that use them, and often lords as well.

First, I'd prefer if manaketes in particular remained exclusive to the existing continuities that already have them. And by that, I mean the use of the term "manakete" and the lore of dragons who seal their powers into stones to avoid degeneration, and instead take on human form. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's been done and I don't need to see it again. Let it come back if there are any future visits to Archanea, Magvel, or Elibe, but otherwise, let's stick with new types of dragon people, like the Goldoan laguz or like the Nabateans. This is what IS have been doing ever since Path of Radiance, and I hope they continue. As for whether there should be a part-dragon protagonist, I said no. I'm not really against it, per se. But I'm also not really for it, either. From the perspective of flavour, lore and story, I'm completely indifferent and don't mind either way. There are interesting stories they could tell about a part-dragon main character, but there are also plenty of interesting stories to be told about purely human characters. So I'm fine either way. Where it falls down, I think, is mechanically. Through Fire Emblem so far, dragons just haven't been all that interesting to use, because they have so many fewer options. Take Corrin, for instance. If you want to use dragon Corrin then you have two weapon options for the game, the dragonstone and the dragonstone+, and that's it. One is strong and slow, the other is weaker but faster. That's your choice. On the other hand, if you want to use Corrin with a sword, then you have 4 basic swords and 4 basic katanas, giving you finer gradations of the strong vs fast trade off. Then you also have the killing edge for crit, the armorslayer, wyrmslayer and spirit katana for effective damage, the kodachi for 1-2 range, the levin sword for magic damage, the brave sword for extra attacks, the axe splitter and dual katana to mess with weapon triangle, multiple "joke" weapons, and two different personal swords, one of which upgrades twice. That's over 20 different swords, compared to two dragonstones. Then you also have to consider that swords are a part of the weapon triangle, with everything that that entails, whereas dragonstones just sit on their own and don't interact with anything else. Swords just give a lot more choices and a lot more tactical depth. Sure, it would be possible to devise twenty different flavours of dragonstone as well, but that's a lot of work for very little return. Swords can potentially be used by literally everyone, are probably going to be used by multiple of your units and by a large number of enemies. Whereas for dragonstones, you'll have a maximum of three units in your army who can use them at all, probably aren't actually going to be using them on all three, and I don't recall a single enemy who uses them. Why go to the trouble of making more than two of the things, in that case? So I think that what I want overall is for the main character's weapon to be fully integrated with the rest of the game. And they potentially could do that if they chose to, but they also probably wouldn't. They'd probably do the same "this character is super special and unique" thing like they did with Corrin, which would leave us with the same issues in terms of gameplay.

If that was the intention, then it was really poorly executed. Sacrificing 2 points of movement for 2 points of speed is a poor trade, sure. But more than that, you still need to train in riding to get into cavalier/paladin in the first place. One of the big benefits that a lance infantry class could have had would have been that you wouldn't have to train riding. Which would have been great for characters with a strength in lances but a weakness in riding (eg Dedue, Seteth) but also good if you just want to hyper-specialise on lances and push for S and S+ rank, like you can do for other weapon types (with Swordmaster, Sniper, Warrior, Grappler, Bishop, and Warlock).

There's also Donnel in Awakening who starts out as lance infantry and promotes out of it. Not that that counts for much of anything. If I had to guess at a reason -- at least, at a reason other than "IS sometimes make weird and incomprehensible choices" -- then I'd guess that it's because in medieval Europe, polearm infantry is mostly associated with mercenaries and militia, whereas nobles are thought of as fighting either with lances from horseback, or with swords when they're on foot. (And note that I'm saying "associated with" and "thought of" here. My medieval military history isn't good enough to say whether these associations are truly accurate, but for something like Fire Emblem, accuracy is basically irrelevant. It's not meant to actually depict history.) Regardless, we all know how much the series loves its nobility and its tropes of nobility. And most games in the series represent that player's army as being small but elite. We are outnumbered, but we are better trained. And how better to represent that than to pack the enemy lines with the most basic type of soldier, the spear infantry? Not saying that I agree with any of this, mind you. But it's my best guess for why things are the way they are.

I agree with all of this, yes. Though I will say that his ceiling is still ridiculously high. Even measured by his ceiling, he's still one of the best characters in the game and one of the best lords in the series. That he can't reach the high highs of Edelgard and Dimitri says more about how overpowered they are than it does about any possible weakness of Claude's. I think that putting them on a Gremory is a fine choice, since it really covers for the biggest weakness of that class, it's low move. I often like to throw them onto a Fortress Knight, for the same reason. I think it largely comes down to a question of which you value higher out of consistency or power spike. If you put the DLC boots (or regular boots in this game or any other) onto a low-movement character (like a Gremory or Fortress Knight) then that's going to give them a consistent boost that is going to make the unit just that bit better, turn after turn. On the other hand, if you put them on a high-movement unit with canto (like a Falcon Knight or Wyvern Lord), then that's going to open up some plays that just wouldn't be possible otherwise, thanks to the ridiculous range. But at the same time, there will be a lot more turns where you just aren't doing anything with that extra range because it's complete overkill. Agreed. I think that Magic Bow+ would be a reasonable alternative to Black Magic if it meant you were training in Bows instead of Reason, but it doesn't. If you want to go down that route, you pretty much have to train in Bows as well as Reason, or else you have to have awful attacking options prior to unlocking the Dark Merchant for reliable Arcane Crystal access.

Even if you ignore Alm's secret royal parentage, and his brand, and all of that stuff, Alm is still at least noble-adjacent. And honestly, not that dissimilar to Ike. Like Gawain, Mycen must have been at least minor nobility to become a high-ranking general prior to the Deliverance. And just as Gawain didn't tell his son about his past, Mycen didn't tell his adoptive grandson about his. And yes, Mycen actually does a hell of a lot better at actually living like a commoner than Greil does, but I would still argue that "Mycen's grandson" alone would be enough to make Alm not really a commoner. And even if you discount Mycen's (potential) nobility, then there's also the part where his royal father arranged for him to be the ward of and receive personalised weapon training from one of the greatest knights of his generation. That's not something that just any random commoner gets. Right from the very start of the game, there's a separation between Alm and the rest of the Ram gang. He gets to start off in a promoted class while everyone else is still back in villager class (which is actually an advantage for them really since they can Dread Fighter loop, but shh). Agree with all of this. And I'll add that it's only because he's the son of Gawain (and to a lesser extent, that he keeps company with Titania) that Caineghis even gives him the time of day. If it had been (for instance) Shinon who had been in charge of the Greil Mercs when they first entered Gallia, I can only imagine that Caineghis would have said, essentially "OK, good job getting the princess this far; we'll take it from here". Byleth and Micaiah are very different. They probably have the best cases for being raised as commoners. Micaiah especially grew up with absolutely no rank or privilege of birth. Except that they both get literal magic powers as a result of their descent. I'd agree that the four that you mention are the closest to being commoners, but none of them really qualify entirely. Although. Radiant Dawn. Part 2 Chapter 1. For one glorious chapter, we get to play with Brom and Nephenee as our lords. Truly, the proper commoner lords that we all deserve. Joking aside, though, I actually would like to see a game with someone like Brom or Nephenee (or Donnel, or Mozu, etc.) as the main protagonist. Just some poor sod from the peasant class who gets dragged into things and has to struggle through as best they can. Question for anyone more familiar with Elibe lore than I am: is it ever stated if the position of chief is hereditary in the Sacae tribes? If the Lorca hadn't been wiped out, would Lyn have stood to take over the position when her father died, or would the next chief be appointed differently? Or does the question never come up?

Congratulations on finishing the run, especially given that Three Houses is your first Fire Emblem. Recruiting everyone is almost like a little extra challeng run stipulation to add on to the basic run. It's something that's only really worth doing for its own sake, not because it actually helps out. If the goal is just to complete the run, then it's definitely easier just to recruit the people you're going to use and the ones whose paralogues give useful items or battalions. Yeah, the early game is definitely one of the trickiest parts of a Maddening run. There's a difficulty spike at chapter 13 and another one for endgame, but by and large, once you're through the early game, you're through the worst of things. Once you've had the time to start acquiring the toolkit you need and the builds you're looking to run, things get a whole lot easier. Honestly, I tend to think that the reverse difficulty curve is one of the biggest weaknesses of the design of Maddening. My take away from this is less that Ignatz is a really good unit and more that Sniper is a really good class. Most units will function well as a delete button once you have Hunter's Volley and a full crit setup. And yeah, he definitely does have some stuff going for him (his personal, his high Dex and Luck growths, and his rallies), but I think it's the Sniper class that's doing most of the heavy lifting. I'd definitely agree that he's worth using in Verdant Wind where he's available in the early game and chapter 13, but he wouldn't be a high priority recruit for me in any other routes (especially since Shamir exists and can get to Hunter's Volley much quicker). I've run Falcon Knight Byleth before without much trouble. I think part of your problem was probably that you were trying to combine this with the recruit every last one of them run. If you don't need to do many sidetracks for recruitment, then going for a class line like Falcon Knight or Wyvern is fine. But if you are trying to recruit everyone, then probably best to leave her in Enlightened One. I am generally less high on Lysithea then many people are. Don't get me wrong, I still think she's a very good unit, just not a phenomenal one. Her weakest performance, as you point out, is in the very early game and the very late game. Which are typically some of the hardest parts of the game. Her strength is through the middle game, which (except for chapter 13) is often the easiest part of the game. And she is a worthy recipient of valuable resources like Thyrsus and the Sacred Galewind Shoes, but using them on her does tend to make her seem better than she is. She's still a good unit, though.

For Civ in particular, it's notable that the change from a square grid to a hex grid coincided with a complete overhaul of how combat in the series worked, with the switch over to one unit per tile. I'd also say that the change didn't go over entirely without a hitch. The launch version of Civ V was pretty damn mediocre; it only got good after various patches, expansions, and DLCs. And even now, at the end of the lifecycle of Civ VI, there are still some issues that haven't been addressed. The AI is still woefully bad at handling one unit per tile, for instance. So, with that in mind, my answer to the original question is that yes, it could probably be made to work, but that there would doubtless be teething problems along the way. So it certainly isn't something that I would like to see done just for the sake of doing it, but only if it's a coherent part of some larger overhaul.

I like this idea in theory, but how many times has Fire Emblem actually done this? The herons in Tellius definitely fit, since they had good lore/flavour reasons why they couldn't fight. But beyond that? Maybe Merlinus? But I don't think it would really hurt his character if he could swing a sword a bit, but was just very bad at it. Those are the only ones that I'm really thinking of immediately who have a reason why they can't ever fight. I'm also not sure how well this would work in a game where reclassing exists. They'd need to both ban the individual character from ever reclassing into a fighting class, and also ban other units from reclassing into the class. And that would work fine for something like a heron (or a dancer or some other equivalent), but I can't see it working for basic support classes like healers.

To really simplify animations, they could have the class sing instead of play instruments, and have different songs have different effects. Maybe learning new songs as they level up. Could have one to refresh, one to heal, maybe one to raise biorhythm or to fill a transform gauge? Nah, bad idea. Biorhythms and transform gauges were awful and shouldn't come back. On the subject of pure support classes, I'm somewhat ambivalent. My one big hope is that if they do exist, then they have a decent levelling curve that roughly keeps pace with combat units. I don't want support units that race off multiple levels ahead of everyone else, and I definitely don't want support units where you have to make sure that you are healing every single turn, even if it's only for 1hp, just to manage to stay five levels below everyone else.

Relationship status: It's complicated. People are weird and complicated and don't always fit neatly into boxes, and I like when fiction reflects that. The relationship between Micaiah and Sothe is the relationship between Micaiah and Sothe. It is sui generis. There are elements to it that resemble a parental relationship, a sibling relationship, a romance, and a friendship, but it isn't any of these things. It's its own thing.

Is anyone familiar with this glitch? [For the benefit of anyone doing a web search in future, it's a screenshot from Blazing Blade with the text "In rotta per la costa a sud di Caelin, they seek passage in the port of Badon."] I did a web search for it, and didn't find any mention of it. Which is unusual, because Fire Emblem glitches are normally very well documented, even minor inconsequential ones like this one. This is playing the European version of the game on Wii U virtual console, for what it's worth. And it's supposed to be in English but has the random Italian line that got in somehow (as opposed to being supposed to be in Italian but with a random English line). It doesn't really matter in the slightest, but I thought it was amusing, wanted to document it somewhere, and wondered if anyone knew anything more.

I don't like to use words like "deserve" and "should" for this sort of thing. Thinking in those terms tends to lead to either toxic entitlement or to the disappointment of over-inflated expectations. IS should make whatever game their developers are excited and enthusiastic to work on and that their business people think will sell. That said, the remakes that I would like to see the most are of Genealogy of the Holy War and Path of Radiance. The former because I've not played it, would like to, but generally don't do emulators. The latter because it's one of my favourites and I'd like for it to be more readily available so my friends can play it. And I do think that I'd prefer that any potential remake cover only a single game, rather than trying to cram two old games into one. I think that a smaller, tighter focus would be more likely to lead to a higher quality game. But even so, I'm pretty sure I'd be excited for any remake they care to make. Sacred Stones is one of my personal least favourite Fire Emblem games, but if they announced they were remaking it, I'd still end up counting the days until release.

Mixed feelings, but leaning more toward positive than negative. There's a lot that I like, but also a lot that I dislike. First, the good: I really enjoyed the voice acting. A lot of great performances which really added life to the character and the script. The presentation was, generally speaking, rather charming. I like (most of) the characters. The story is simple and straightforward, and sometimes that's exactly what I want. I like how gloriously imbalanced it is. There's so much ridiculous overpowered nonsense for both the player and the enemy, and it all somehow works out, in a "when everything is overpowered, nothing is overpowered" sort of way. I actually like the map design, for the most part. I like having stat boosters be at shrines rather than items, because that made me actually use them, as opposed to succumbing to my base hoarder instincts. And now the bad: A lot of story stuff is messed up. As Dark Holy Elf explained. The lack of a higher difficulty option really hurts the game. I think that it's the easiest that the hardest setting in a FE game has been this side of PoR international release. Too many bland skirmish fights. In dungeons, I was bad at avoiding them due to a combination of my being a klutz (there's a reason I mostly play turn-based games) and the poor camera and controls. Outside of dungeons, the map spawns made me want to avoid doing any of them side quests, because I didn't want to go back and forth any more than I absolutely had to and spawn more random crap on the map. The forging system is a mess. Weapon evolutions is a neat idea, but unless you're using a guide (or have memorised from previous playthroughs) then it's complete luck whether you get something great (eg, a killer bow) or something that's not even a clear upgrade over what you started with (eg, a rhomphaia). this is made worse since you can't even see a weapon's combat arts to begin with, so you're even more in the dark as to which evolutions are actually good/ And the gold and silver marks that you need are rare enough (outside of grinding) that you don't really have enough of them to just experiment with.

I don't want it to be a mainstay, and definitely think we could use a break after Fates and Three Houses, but I wouldn't mind it showing up from time to time. I would be wary of seeing more games where you (can or must) fight on multiple sides in the same conflict. To various extents, I have problems with how that ended up working out in Three Houses, Fates and also Radiant Dawn, which did it without a route split. But there's no reason why a route split has to be "which side of this conflict are you fighting on?" Instead it can be "how are you choosing to fight against this enemy?" which Sacred Stones and Gaiden/Echoes both played with to some degree.

I'd say probably Deen or Sonya here. Both are running with bandits and only join up with us when we destroy their gang. Shinnon would be my choice here, for the unrepentant racism. And also generally just being a jerk to everyone. Naesala is worse if we're only going by PoR characterisation, but he gets some justification in Radiant Dawn. And here, I'd say Jeritza. Murder, kidnap, blood lust, psychopathy, the works.

Oliver, from Radiant Dawn. Slaver, bigot, narcissist, corrupt politician.

If IS had wanted to do same sex relationships, it would have been easy enough for them to make it work. Adoption exists, and has existed since the ancient world. And the vast majority of inherited traits in the game are ones that are easily explained as being learned/cultural rather than genetic (I'm pretty sure there is not a gene for being a Pegasus Knight, for instance). And honestly, this is a fantasy world with magic, time travel, and people coming back from the dead. There's no reason they couldn't just have said that same-sex couples could use magic to have biological children, if they'd wanted to do so. The one thing that I think would have required more substantial change was the mechanics of having each child with a fixed mother but a variable father. That wouldn't work if same sex relationships were included. But even this is far from an unsolvable problem. There are plenty of other approaches that they could have taken that would have worked just as well. So let's not kid ourselves. The reason that there aren't more same-sex options for S supports is because IS (and/or Nintendo) didn't want there to be. Nothing more, nothing less. And look, I'm not going to say that every piece of media in existence has to cater to me, my tastes and my desires. They don't, obviously. If IS and Nintendo want to go full heteronormativity on every single thing they ever make, then that is absolutely their prerogative. And if you enjoyed that aspect of it, then great. Genuinely. I do not go in for the toxic "well, if I don't like it then nobody should be allowed to like it!" mentality. It's impossible to please all of the people all of the time. But I would be lying if I said that it didn't have an impact on my personal enjoyment and opinion of the game. Think of it this way: Awakening (and Fates) really leaned into the whole M/F shipping side of thing. And that is great for people who enjoy that, but not so good for people who don't enjoy it. (For whatever reason. Be they people who like M/M or F/F ships, people who are more interested in seeing platonic relationships than romantic ones, people who don't care about the characters and story and just want to get to the tactical combat as quickly as possible, etc.)