lenticular

In the original trilogy, he was a minor character who took a comedy pratfall to his death after losing control of his jetpack in a fight with a blind man. I think it has always been more of a product than an art. Or at the very least, being a product has been a core part of what Star Wars is ever since its inception. It might be that the product to art ratio has shifted even further in favour of product, but it's only reinforcing what was already there. I'm thinking of all the Star Wars action figures that I had as a kid growing up in the 80s, for instance.

I wouldn'ty say it was either over- or under-tutorialised. Rather, I think it was badly tutorialised. It's not that I didn't understand the mechanics. It's that I couldn't remember everything that I was being told. It would pop up with some mechanic or other, and then before I'd had a proper chance to get used to it or sometimes even to try it out at all, it would give me another tutorial message about something else. and then another one. It was very enthusiastic about barfing out its tutorial messages, but didn't actually give any time or space to learn the game.

I played for maybe an hour to an hour and a half and the most prominent thought and feeling that I have after that time is that this game has absolutely no interest in teaching me how to play it. I've very little experience with Musou/Warriors games before. I played a tiny bit of Hyrule Warriors but bounced off it pretty damn quickly. So I was only really here for the Fire Emblem, but was plenty happy to give the gameplay a try. But eesh. The game just flashed up tutorial message after tutorial message introducing me to new feature after new feature and new button combination after new button combination, and there is no way in hell that I'm remembering all of that. Do they just assume that everyone already knows how the gameplay works and so there's no need to teach it and ease people in gently? Or do they just assume that new players will just play on easy mode (which I did) and not actually need to use half of the different features? Or am I just terrible at remembering instructions?

It could be a combination of both, honestly. It's hardly the only part of Three Houses that was underdeveloped, bordering on unfinished, so it might be that they were rushing to put something in, but wanted to err on the side of underpowered and oversimplified. After all, an underpowered mechanic is just useless, whereas an overpowered one can break a game. Who knows, though? This is all just speculation. Interesting thought, though I think ti would also have a lot of potential to mess with game balance and difficulty. Without a unit cap, there wouldn't be the inherent trade-off that pair up had in Awakening and Fates. In those games, having units paired up makes meaningfully fewer units deployed on the field. In SoV, it would technically mean fewer deployed units, but if those units weren't doing anything anyway, then it's basically free power at no cost. And given that SoV is already one of the easier games in the series, I'm not sure I'd really want something that made it even easier. Still a neat idea though, especially if it could be combined with a hypothetical harder difficulty setting.

I can easily imagine that they might have decided that they wanted something along the lines of Pair Up but that it had to be less powerful than in Awakening and also less complicated than in Fates. And if that was the design spec, then I can also imagine how they might have ended up with the Adjutant system of Three Houses. Which is underpowered and oversimplified. So, not what I would consider a particularly good design decision, but one I can understand.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that he needs anything else, but there are certainly other things he could make good use of. Hit +20 is one, as you mention, and I would definitely want to spend the time to master Soldier for Reposition (and Def +2 while we're at it). And yes, Cichol Wyverns are great, but they're great on pretty much everyone and giving them to Seteth means not giving them to someone else. But yes, I do take your point that Seteth is one of the best of the late joiners. Decent stats, starting off in the best class line in the game, Swift Strikes and the Major Crest of Cichol are all very nice to have. These numerous advantages combined with the disadvantage of joining late make for a unit who is solid but not remarkable. Now, compare that to Judith, who shows up 3 chapters later, as an infantry sword class. Without some sort of special treatment, she'd end up possibly worse than Gilbert.

On the one hand, sure, it would be nice to have more playable characters. I don't think many people would argue against that. But on the other hand, I'm not sure how useful they'd end up being. Judith only starts showing up in Chapter 15 and Nader not until Chapter 18, and the skill system in Three Houses is typically not kind to late-joining units. Gilbert's late arrival isn't the only reason that he's widely thought of as one of the game's worst units, but it's definitely a big contributing factor. And Judith and Nader would both be coming in even later than he does. Another option would have been to do what they did with Jeritza and give them completely busted skills, but I'm not sure that I like that either. I don't really enjoy playing with overpowered abilities like Counterattack, due to how they distort the game around them. Or maybe they could have made it so that late joiners came with some class masteries already unlocked. Which I wish that they did for Gilbert, Alois, Seteth, etc. already. But then there's another problem: what builds do you give them? For Judith, a class progression that would fit her character would be to give her mastery in Noble, Mymidon, Lord and maybe Mercenary. Which would be better than nothing, but would still elave her weak. A more optimised build might be something more like masteries in Noble, Soldier, Pegasus Knight and Brigand, but that ends up feeling too gamey for my tastes. Which isn't to say that these are insurmountable problems. I'm sure that there are ways that late-joining characters could be made to work in Three Houses. But it isn't a trivial issue.

A few comments. First, I think that when talking about any sort of challenge run, it's always worth taking the time to spell out exactly what restrictions you're using. From what you've said, I'm assuming that you're specifying no resets and no Divine Pulse, but are allowing everything else? Honestly, if I just heard "ironman" without any qualifiers, I'd probably assume no NG+ and no grinding was included, but that might just be me. My point isn't that any specific ruleset or set of restrictions is better or worse than any other, just that it's good to make sure that everyone is on the same page before starting the discussion. I don't think I've ever seen anyone claiming that an ironman of Three Houses wouldn't be doable. I don't doubt that some people have said as much, but most of the discussion I've seen on the subject has agreed that it would be possible but not very fun. After all, the plays we make after a Divine Pulse were always avaialble to us, and there's nothing inherently stopping anyone from playing mistake-free the first time around. Fun is, of course, subjective, so I don't think it's particularly useful to present things as "this is fun" or "this is not fun", but rather to frame things as "here are some of the potential difficulties and potential solutions; do they sound fun to you?" For instance, for killer reinforcements, you have a few options. You can memorise them all, you can read up on each level before you play it, or you can just accept that you will suffer losses that are not your fault. None of these sound like fun to me, so I don't play that way. But if they do sound fun to anyone else, then great! The one thing that I would say is that I would actively recommend against anyone trying an ironman run for their first time through Three Houses unless they were willing to read or watch a whole lot of spoilers beforehand. Even for a veteran Fire emblem player, there are a lot of pitfalls with a sight-unseen ironman of Three Houses that just don't exist in other games in the series. I know I did an ironman-style run (with slightly different rules but the same spirit) for my first playthrough of both Shadow Dragon (DS) and Fates: Birthright, and while I have niggles about both of them, they eached worked fairly well. Trying to do that for Three Houses sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, though. So I guess that overall, my feelings would be this: don't try an ironman until you've played the game enough to know what you're getting into, btu then once you have done, make your mind up as to whether it sounds fun for you. That is my experience as well. I don't think I've ever had Chapter 2 go badly for me, whereas I have definitely had runs that had trouble with both Chapters 1 and 3.

A visual novel starring Birdo focusing on her transition. Which will never happen because Nintendo don't even like to acknoweldge that Birdo was originally transgender any more, let alone making a full game about it. Marginally less unlikely: an F-Zero rhythm game. Make it be something kinda like Audiosurf. You have a car going very fast, and then have to weave in and out of other cars in time with the music. This will never happen, because Nintendo doesn't even want to make main-series F-Zero games any more, let alone spin-offs. Or how about a deck builder in the spirit of Dominion, but based on Animal Crossing? Each player's deck represents their island/town/whatever which they have to build up to attract villagers, build facilities, etc. Which will never happen because the second that anyone mentions an Animal Crossing card game, people will have flashbacks to Amiibo Festival and go catatonic. It's a fun idea, but I don't think it could ever work. Mario levels stand alone much better than Fire Emblem maps do. Fire Emblem maps are typically anchored by thier place in the story, by the characters in your army, and so on. Yeah, trial maps do exist, but I generally find them a whole lot less compelling than a map that is actually a part of a full game. Mario levels, on the other hand, work much better in a vacuum. You can just pick up a random Mario level and have it be fun and make sense without any surrounding context. Mario levels are also typically a whole lot faster than Fire Emblem maps. If I play Mario Maker and get a terrible level, then I can probably be done with it in less than five minutes. Either I'll beat it and move on, or I'll very quickly realise that it's terrible and skip it. I can't see that working so well in a Fire Emblem Maker. Bad maps (and there would be a lot of bad maps) would be an absolute chore to play. I mean, I'd still buy it immediately if they ever did make it, and I'm sure that some people would use it to create some really cool things, but I fear the oceans of garbage that we'd have to swim through to find the good maps.

It would also need to have a banging soundtrack. Non negotiable. Whenever I get nostalgic for F-Zero, the music is always one of the first things that comes to mind for me.

I am really tempted to load up Final Fantasy VII for a couple of minutes, purely for the sake of the pun.

How does Star Fox make it in under those criteria? Has it had a Switch release that I've managed to sleep through? And for that matter, how does Pikmin make it in? Not that I'm disputing the quality of either series, but they don't seem to meet your requirements. Although, I will dispute the non-inclusion of Donkey Kong. If anything, Mario is a spinoff from Donkey Kong, not the other way around. I think I'd say that I'm the other way around. A Link to the Past has a strong claim to be my single favourite video game, but it doesn't have as many other games that has really held my interest as Fire Emblem does. That said, my favourites tend to fluctuate a lot over time. Ask me today and I'll say Fire Emblem and A Link to the Past, but if you ask me agin in 6 months, you might get a completely different answer.

Haven't played at all: Anything that was only released in Japan; the Switch rerelease of the Famicom original of Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light; Fates: Revelation; Warriors. Have played and liked: Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Shadow Dragon (DS), Awakening, Shadows of Valentia, Three Houses, TMS#FE. The intensity of the liking varies from "amongst my favourite games ever" to "yeah, that was decent enough", but my overall feelings on all of them is positive. Dislike, but respect at least some of what it was trying to do, even if it's not for me: Fates: Birthright and Conquest. Dislike without reservations: Heroes.

Reyson and Leanne can both do this in Radiant Dawn, if I'm remembering right. As for the original question, I'm not sure that I'd want to further buff dancers, since they're already very strong. If anything, though, I'd want some way to make their skills actually be relevant. In modern FE, dancers (and Azura) don't really interact that much with the skill system as a whole. They have their own special dancer skills off in their own corner, but they don't care about most skills because they're too busy dancing to ever use them. Maybe dancing could share the benefits of (one of?) (a weaker version of?) their skills with the refreshed unit? That would probably be too good, but it would at least make me care more about dancer skills.

Requesting pronunciation guides for Lúin and Areadbhar, please!

That's fair. I am, I think, generally less willing to take certification exams at low pass rates than most people. (This due to a combination of never save scumming for them, not liking to "waste" resources, and finding repeatedly trying to be quite tedious.) For people who are more willing to deal with it than I am, I can see that C swords isn't a huge investment. Also fair enough. I don't typically have any shortage of units who are capable of baiting in a small number of enemies by that point, but if that is a role that you're struggling for, then I can definitely see that the Vantage/B. Wrath build would be able to do so just fine. I wonder if this is related to what we discussed earlier with how I like for my player phase units to be able to take a hit, whereas you don't care about that? Regardless, it does sound like a playstyle issue.

Which units are you doing this with? Late-joining units with Battalion Wrath are, what? Alois, Gilbert and Seteth? Am I missing any? But as far as I'm aware, don't Gilbert and Alois both start at E rank swords? Getting them certified into Hero to begin with sounds like it would take more effort than mastering Brigand for Death Blow. Since you probably have the Cethleann statue upgrade and a knowledge gem by this point, the mastery only takes 25 combats as an adjutant, which can be accomplished in a single weekend of paralogues/quest battles/auxiliary battles. Seteth does have an easier time getting into Hero, but he also has a much better default class, which makes the switch less appealing. I also have to say, I'd be very wary of using an enemy phase build like Vantage/B. Wrath just as a stopgap. That sort of build tends to steal xp from everyone else, which is fine if you're building a juggernaught who's going to solo the rest of the game, but is something I'd be nervous of if I was just going to use to for a couple of chapters and then hope that everyone else hadn't fallen to far behind. I've never tried doing things the way you're suggesting here, so I may be completely wrong, but it's definitely something I'd be nervous of. As an aside, though, I agree with you about Fortress Knight. I think it's a decent class which has a lot of use cases.

Out of the games I've played, for normal/classic in particular, I'd say that the two easiest are Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses, specifically because of the Turnwheel/Divine Pulse mechanic. Playing mistake-free is one of the bigger challenges of Fire Emblem on lower difficulties, and getting rid of that makes a big difference. If we're not allowing time rewind (and probably let's also ban battle saves while we're at it), then the answer would be "anything that allows for infinite grinding", so Sacred Stones, Awakening, Birthright, Revelation (I think; I've not played it), Shadows of Valentia, Three Houses. If we're also banning grinding, then maybe Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance. As for hardest, probably Radiant Dawn and Conquest. Though part of that depends on whether we're talking about Japanese normal mode (which was called easy mode internationally) or international normal mode (which was called hard mode in Japan). If we're talking international normal mode, then definitely Radiant Dawn and it isn't even close. If we're talking Japanese normal mode, then I think I'd put Radiant Dawn and Conquest in the same difficulty tier.

For me, part of the problem is that the build has its flaws, and while they can all be addressed through one means or another, addressing them stops it from being a such a low investment build. Maybe you're spending a turn or two setting up at the start of each battle, you're using either a guard adjutant or the Blessing gambit in the process, you're also using a Retribution gambit to make it work, then you've got to watch out for enemy gambits, monsters, siege weapons, high def and high avo units, and you've got to make sure that you aren't taking too much xp away from other units to stall their growth. All of these problems are very solvable, of course. I'm not saying that they aren't. But they all make the build either more complicated or more resource-expensive to run. So it just doesn't work for me as a quick and easy low-investment build. Sure, +8 strength is great, but the cost for it is: one ability slot, (at least) three quarters of your health, the turns that you take setting up at the start of every battle, and having to master Hero to get it. To me, that just isn't worth it. "Just don't get hit" is fine, but consider as well that HP is a resource. Being able to take a hit gives tactical flexibility that you don't otherwise have. If Defiant Strength was just a straight up tradeoff between HP and Strength, then I think it would be an interesting choice. Personally, I would still probably favour having x4hp over +8str most of the time due to my playstyle, but I can see it going either way. But when you add in the other costs (the ability slot, the setup time, the class mastery), I can't say I find it appealing. You can make it work, sure, and +8str is good enough that it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, but I don't find the benefit to be worth the costs.

Agreeing with the suggestion of Sol. It often means a paladin can just heal up any chip damage they take, which lets them be self-sufficient and survive indefinitely. Beyond that, I consider both Luna and Astra to be OK. Neither one is great, but more damage is more damage, and both will end up having you score a few more skills than you owuld have done without them.

My expectations for new character designs have been incredibly low since I saw the Edelgard redesign, which I don't like at all. Why is she wearing less armour so she can show off some skin in battle? (I know the out of universe answer to this, so no need to tell me.) And why is she now sporting a heart motif for her outfit? It just doesn't fit her established character at all. My hope is that it turns out that this Edelgard is an Agarthan impostor, and when the real Edelgard returns, she asks everyone else how they could possibly have believed such a poor imitation, and that everyone else is suitably embarrassed. My actually realistic hope is that they don't butcher too many more character designs in the name of fanservice. Please?

That was just a pure brain-fart moment on my part. For some reason I was thinking that you couldn't recruit Alois in CF, even though I know full well that you can. Ignore that part and pretend I just said Catherine and Seteth.

You mean like this?

Dubious and borderline, but Seteth, Catherine and Alois can all be playable in Crimson Flower for a single paralogue chapter only.

For sure. It's not something that I'd be likely to do myself, since it wouldn't really mesh well with my playstyle, but there's absolutely no reason why you can't run multiple dodgetanks. The major resource that they'd compete over would be the evasion ring. It's always possible to pick up more than one of them, but how easy it is depends on which route you're playing and whether you have the DLC. There's always the easy one from Anna;s shop, but if you don't have the DLC (or are choosing not to use it, or don't want to spend the renown) then I believe that the only other ones you can get in Crimson Flower are by stealing from Dimitri or Claude at the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, which is a pain. Still, even if you only have one evasion ring, it's certainly possible to build a dodge tank without one, and I can certainly imagine times when I'd want to equip a different accessory instead.