lenticular

Also Rafiel, a Prince of Serenes in Radiant Dawn and Raphael, a himbo in Three Houses.

F-Zero is now a rhythm game. Act in time to the music to dodge and overtake other cars, hit boost pads, avoid hazards, etc. Different race tracks have different music tracks, and different race features could lead to different mechanical features to keep things fresh. Plus the option for other rhythm mini-games that are not in a car, but just feature Captain Falcon doing Captain Falcon things. Bejeweled is now a tactical, turn based stealth/heist game, which sees the player take control of an elite team of jewele thieves, pulling off ever bigger and more elaborate heists. California Games is now a visual novel and life sim. The games themselves are still there, but they're no longer the be all and end all, just a part of the life of the main characters. Matching the original game's release year, his would be set in 1987 California, and would heavily lean into the cultural aesthetic that that implies. Fire Emblem is now a dating and child-raising simulator, with an emphasis on making good matches that will give the best genes to the children of said matches. Wario Land is now a theme park sim game in which you must build up Wario Land to be the world's greatest theme park, while syphoning off as much of the profits as possible into your own personal bank account. Lemmings is now a puzzle platformer. You play as a lemming, and your job is to show that your species isn't actually terminally stupid, as you solve all the puzzles and don't walk off a cliff even once. I'll go the opposite direction. Guild Wars is now a roguelike deckbuilder, along the lines of Slay the Spire (or possibly more along the lines of Monster Train due to the dual class thing, but not as many people have heard of that). Fully leaning into the idea of build depth and interesting skill combinations, and dropping the RPG elements entirely. (Some of these were more serious than others.)

Awakening is... fine? There's very little about it that I love, but also not that much that I hate. It's just a good, solid, middle-of-the-pack Fire Emblem game. I know that in some ways it's thought of as being a collection of the greatest hits of the series up to that point, and in some ways I can see that. But a lot of the remixes just don't seem to be as good as the originals. A Tellius fan might see echoes of the laguz in the taguel, but they're not nearly as interesting or satisfying. A Sacred Stones fan might like travelling around the world map and fighting skirmishes to level up, but there's no equivalent of the Tower or Ruins, so isn't the original better? I've never played Genealogy, but my understanding is that the second generation there plays a vastly different role in how that game plays out (deliberately vague both to avoid spoilers and for my lack of familiarity), and that the Awakening kids won't really satisfy someone's nostalgia there. I think that Awakening's greatest strengths are rather where it was doing more of its own thing. The first big thing that Awakening did was to really embrace the casual audience. Not only by the continued inclusion of New Mystery's casual mode, but also by offering infinite grinding and the chance to reset character level and continue leveling indefinitely. Being able to bring in a bigger potential audience was massive for the series, and I am only ever going to be glad when a game gives its players more choices for how they want to engage with it. It also came up with a new skills system, with the skills being heavily tied to the reclassing mechanic, and the potential to come up with compelling builds for all characters. Variants on the same system have made their way to Fates and Three Houses and pretty much just feel standard by now, but Awakening was the innovator here. And honestly, I still can't decide whether I like it or not. Coming up with different skill builds is a lot of fun, and its very satisfying when a planned build finally starts to come together. That's the plus side. But the downside is that I don't really find the moment to moment gameplay to be all that much fun. Change character a to class b, stay in the class until they get skill z, then immediately switch to class c... it all feels a lot like busywork and can detract from the simplicity and immediacy of the tactical gameplay. I'm not sure I can think of any system that I'd like more, though, so overall it's probably a good thing. Then there's the pair up mechanic. Again, new in Awakening but it's become something of a staple (if we consider the adjutant system in Three Houses to be a continuation of the same basic idea). And honestly, I haven't really liked any of the implementations. Awakening's is overpowered, Fates' is over-fiddly, and Three Houses' is underwhelming. Still, I do like the idea behind it, even so. What else is there to say? The story was unremarkable, but generally inoffensive, and at least moderately engaging. The characters were fairly shallow, but entertaining and likeable enough that I actually cared when they died. Much the same could be said of most of the maps. There are very few standout memories of phenomenal maps, but very few that made me rage. They were solid. Decent. Fine. As for stuff I didn't enjoy, I'll say the children system and the concept of the outrealms. The children system felt like it warped the characters and supports around it too much. All characters had to be single. Every support chain had to have the possibility of ending with a romance. Supports between two male characters or two female characters became vanishingly rare. And the whole thing was far too heteronormative for my tastes. For outrealm, I just prefer that the different worlds of different FE games stay separate, as their own self-contained stories. I don't like the attempt to put together a single all-encompassing cosmology, and I don't like the weird crossovers. It's fairly easy to avoid, so it's not a major issue, but it still bugs me a little. But overall? Yeah, it was fine.

Has nobody said Tomas yet? That's the name of an archer in Archanea and a librarian in Fódlan.

For me personally: please no. I have the "must collect all the things" mentality/flaw that predatory game monetisation loves to target, so I am super careful with that sort of thing. I know that I'm susceptible to that sort of marketing, so I'm quite draconian with myself about staying the hell away. If I ever find myself wanting to buy game A just to get a few bits and pieces in game B (and I surely would in this case), then I will typically just stop playing game B entirely. The best way to resist temptation is to make sure you're nowhere near it. So, if they did add new characters like you suggest, then not only would that mean that I definitely won't buy Three Hopes (as opposed to only probably won't buy it otherwise), it would also probably mean that I would stop playing Three Houses, and that I wouldn't buy anything else Three Houses related in the future (whether that's DLC, merch, whatever). And I'd also be more wary of buying anything in this franchise in the future. If it were something relatively minor -- maybe a stat booster, or some rares seeds for the greenhouse, or something like that -- then I wouldn't care, but something relatively substantial like extra characters would be a big turn off for me. Although, if they did something like "here's a new DLC character pack that you can buy separately for [something relatively cheap] or alternatively you can get it for free if you buy Three Hopes" then I wouldn't have an issue with that. But that sort of cross-game promotional tie-in very rarely ends up with that sort of option. That said, I think that I am probably in the minority on this, and that they would probably end up making more extra sales than they would lose out from people like me. I do not think I am representative of hte playerbase as a whole. On the other hand, I'm also not certain that adding these would be as easy as you thing. Not technically, mind, but legally. I'm not sure of the exact wording of the agreement that followed the 2016-17 SAG-AFTRA strike, but I know that it included a provision about giving actors more information about the roles that they were working on. Just because they have the voice lines recorded doesn't necessarily mean that they have the legal right to just use them in any other project that they want to. I mean, they might do. I'm not a lawyer. But I would not be at all surprised if there would be IP rights involved that would make something like this complicated.

I'm not even sure the game itself knows sometimes. Just from the name, I'd assume it to be some sort of dressing for a wound. But then some games have flavour text referring to medicine or potion, which don't entirely preclude it being a dressing, but are somewhat odd choices of words if that's the intent. And then there's also the icons used across different games, some of which look like they're supposed to be applied topically, while others look more like they're supposed to be drunk. For instance, in Tellius, vulneraries and elixirs have very different icons, which would make me think that vulneraries are applied and elixirs are imbibed. Yet, in their (English) flavour text, both mention "consumed", which would make me think that both are taken orally. And then in Three Houses, both items have the same icon which looks more like it should be drunk, but both have descriptions saying they should be "used". If I had to come down one way or another, I'd say that they're applied. But I don't really think the games are consistent enough to make a meaningful judgement.

I don't remember the chapter by chapter events of that playthrough, so I can't say for certain, but I don't think it gave me any problems. The only chapter I recall having trouble with was the endgame, and that only because of losses I'd taken due to attrition. I was only playing on Hard, though, and ultimately, Birthright Hard just doesn't seem particularly challenging to a series veteran, even doing a sight-unseen ironman.

Long story short, I don't care for it. The narrative, characters, and world-building all left me completely cold. And while I can respect a lot of what they were trying for with the game mechanics and understand why others like them, they absolutely did not work for me. Plus myriad other minor annoyances with the UI, My Castle, the graphics... just lots of stuff that I didn't care for. Which isn't to say that I hated everything. There are a good few parts of Fates that I did like. Kinshi Knights, 1-2 range healing, the aesthetic of the theatre level, a lot of the music, and so on. Overall, I would characterise it as a deeply flawed game, but one that is full of ideas. But ultimately, not for me.

But let's say that we were going to include an explanation in the game. We've thought it through, we have a full explanation for what's really going on. It makes sense, it's consistent with everything else in the lore, it's just generally a good explanation. Where do we fit this into the game? Do we have Yune deliver a speech explaining the deep underlying workings of magic in the world? Do we have a base conversation where Soren tells us he's been doing some research and has figured out why laguz parents actually lose their power? I hope not. Either one would be jarring and out of place. But I don't have any better ideas. And ultimately, the fact that it doesn't matter is kind of the point. It was an accident, with no greater meaning behind it.

While recent games have been increasing the effective range of bows, they've also been increasing the effective range of magic. Bows have the advantage in Shadows of Valentia, even though 3-range magic is common, but they're much more even in Three Houses. Getting up to 7-range for non-siege magic isn't particularly hard there (Thoron/Mire/Death + Thyrsus + Valkyrie + S rank Reason), and getting up to about 5 range is something that tends to happen without even trying. I see your point about Pegasus Knights and being able to hit def rather than res, but hitting def is only really an advantage when strength and magic are comparable, which IS doesn't tend to do with their hybrid unit design. Though, in fairness, if they go forward with specific spell lists rather than tomes, not all units are going to have access to wind magic, so there is that. Except, realistically, I'd probably just prefer to have someone else deal with the pegasus and let my bow mage do something else instead. Maybe a flying class would actually be the best choice for a bow mage, since they're most likely to be operating autonomously, not have anyone else to support them, and actually need that effective damage against enemy fliers? For Hanneman specifically, I found he was decent enough as a dedicated mage and decent enough as a dedicated archer, but pretty lousy as a hybrid. As an archer, you really want to get him to B rank in bows so he can use a magic bow which is a non-trivial investment. And you also really want him to pick up Hunter's Volley so he can double, except that you can't have that and magic at the same time. The more that the series moves towards skills and combat arts and different builds being meaningfully different, the more difficulties there are going to be to make hybrids work.

I disagree with that. I think it's a bad idea for a writer to try to justify literally every element of their world. There's always going to be something left over that isn't explained, and if you do try to cover literally everything then you end up with a plodding and pedantic work that reads more like a treatise on the fictional universe's metaphysics than an actual story. (Or like the appendices to Lord of the Rings, which few people actually read.) I mean, I'd love to know how laguz change their weight when they transform and how that doesn't completely break all of physics, but it's not even a little bit necessary for the story. Sometimes you just have to say that it's magic and that's just the way the magic works. You even get things like the taris-like nature of the Tower of Guidance, where we are literally told not to think about it too much. So long as the world building is internally consistent and so long as it supports the narrative and the characters, then that is typically going to be enough. (And yes, there are a few authors like JRR Tolkien or Brandon Sanderson who specialise on elaborate and intricately crafted worlds but they are the exception rather than the rule, and what works in a long novel series isn't necessarily going to work in a video game setting.)

I'm not surprised that bow/agic has never been done. It doesn't seem like a combination that offers a whole lot, either mechanically or thematically. Mechanically, bows and magic tend to serve a similar function: they both typically attack at range, often do chip damage, and usually operate outside of the weapon triangle. So giving a unit the ability to do that with two different weapon types doesn't seem all that meaningful. Sure, it would mean they'd potentially be able to hit against both def and res, which isn't nothing, but that would come with all the normal weaknesses of hybrid classes and all the weakness of training up two different weapon ranks, which probably wouldn't be worth it. Thematically, I'm not sure I can think of any good examples of fighters using bows and magic. Or at least, not bows and the sort of battle magic that Fire Emblem goes for with fireballs and lightning bolts and that sort of things. Most of the examples of bows + magic that I can think of from fiction tend to go for either nature based magic or illusion based magic. Which isn't to say that they couldn'tdesign a class where it made sense, but I don't think that it's a super obvious archetype that feels lacking in its absence. As for what I want to see, more staff + martial weapon combinations. I always find them really fun units to use, and I think there's a whole lot of unexplored territory with them.

I agree with the picks people have already made of Halberdier and Troubadour. To them, I will add: Dread Fighter. Because mage killer is an interesting feature to be able to add on to sword infantry units. Kinshi Knight. I like the visual design here, shooting arrows from a flying mount is always cool, and air superiority is another fun niche. Some sort of healer on a winged horse. Whether that's letting Falcon Knight heal again, a unique class like Elincia's or something else, I don't really care. I just want this combination back in some form. If it were me, I'd probably have a branching promotion for Pegasus Knight, with Falcon Knight being purely offensive and Seraph Knight getting healing access. But any other way of doing it would work too. And while I'm here, two classes that I hope won't come back are Malig Knight and Ninja. Malig Knight is just personal preference, but I have a bit of reasoning when it comes to Ninja. I'm not sure I want to see any weapon types permanently added to the core FE weapon canon (sword, lance, axe, bow, tome, staff) and would rather that extra weapons -- like shuriken and gauntlets -- be a distinctive feature of their individual game. So, no more ninjas, but leave space for some other new weapon if they have good ideas for one.

One thing that is relevant for actors is how much time they have to prepare for the role. Consider accents, as an example. Let's say that we need an accent who can do an Indian English accent. Now, pretty much any talented actor working with a talented dialect coach and given enough time to prepare will be able to learn the accent extremely well. Sure, an expert would probably be able to point out a few slight inaccuracies, but overall, they'd be able to do a damn good job of it. On the other hand if they're just handed a script and told that they start recording the next day so they should spend the evening listening to a few recordings and practicing in front of a mirror, then their accent is going to suck. Exactly how much it sucks will depend on the actor, but it is going to suck. Accurately mimicing accents is hard. Unless, of course, the actor is actually from India and is a native speaker of Indian English. In that case, they wouldn't actually need any time to prepare at all. They could just do it, and do it even more flawlessly than the hypothetical non-Indian actor who had spent the last 6 months preparing. Obviously. The same, I think, can be true for life experience. If an actor is asked to portray something that is far outside their life experience then they need time to prepare. They need to get into the charater's headspace and understand their motivations in order to know what sort of inflections and emotions to deliver their lines with (and yes, obviously some of that comes from the director, but not all). And any talented actor can do that if they have time, but when time is short, being able to draw on personal experience definitely doesn't hurt. Now, I don't know how much time voice actors have to prepare for their roles in Fire Emblem games, but my guess would be "not as much as they'd like". They're typically working on quite a tight time schedule since they have -- to some extent -- to fit around development, writing and localisation and a worldwide release date for the game. Since this is Fire Emblem, these issues don't come up too often. In a fantasy world, it doesn't really matter if accents are a bit off. It doesn't actually matter how good Gregor's Russian accent is, because he doesn't actually have a Russian accent. He has an accent from whatever region of Ferox he's from, which just happen to sound somewhat Russian. And since we're in a high fantasy faux-medieval world, there aren't that many personal experiences that can easily apply. But that doesn't mean that there aren't any. Going back to the original topic of this thread, one of the reasons that I like Dorothea so much as a character is the authenticity that Allegra Clarke was able to bring to the role, since she herself is a bisexual woman. And that isn't to say that straight (or lesbian or asexual) women couldn't have potentially performed the role just as well, but I don't think they could have done so as naturally. What Clarke had an intuitive understanding of, other actors may have needed to work on, and may not have had the time to do so.

I actually did something similar in Birthright. I went into the game completely sight-unseen/no spoilers. I was also playing ironman style (it wasn't technically an ironman, since I did reset for a Corin death early on rather than restart, but I wasn't resetting for other unit deaths). And I generally just didn't bother with supports. I wasn't enjoying the support conversations, I found the game easy enough that I didn't feel the need for any of the mechanical benefits, and I don't really enjoy the gameplay style of keeping two units glued together. So why would I bother? And then, of course, partway through the game, new recruitment just completely dried up. And I gradually started losing units to silly mistakes, and it grew harder and harder to replace them. (And of course, I also lost Kaze. and of course, I didn't get Izuna or Yukimura.) But then, eventually, I did stumble into an S support by accident. Not because I'd been trying for it, but just because it had built up naturally from the way I was playing. It was Ryoma and someone else, though I can't remember who. And then suddenly, there's a paralogue and the game tells me that child characters exist. So, I try to do the paralogue, and naturally, because it's nearly the end of the game by this point, Shiro gets completely slaughtered. So, as far as I could see, yes there were children, but it was too late for them to actually be useful at all, so there was no reason for me to go out of my way to try to pick them up. I did complete the run, but it ended up being a little bit touch-and-go. I remember that for endgame, I was deploying unpromoted Setsuna at something like level 5. She did come in useful tanking a hit for a pair-up partner at one point. Honestly, though. I don't really consider this a gaffe on my part. I think that all of the decisions that I made were reasonable based on the information that I had. Mostly it was just a case of bad luck, with a small side order of the game not adequately explaining or telegraphing one of its important mechanics. But mostly bad luck. It took a confluence of a lot of different unlikely factors to create such an almighty cock-up.

In terms of character: L'Arachel. Nothing more to say about her, I just really enjoy her personality. In terms of mechanics: Sakura. The 1-2 range healing staves in Birthright are possibly my favourite thing about Fates, and Sakura's personal skill combines really well with them. (And on a technicality, I'm also going to say Elincia, since she has a non-promoting unique class, rather than being a pre-promote. She probably doesn't count for what you were looking for, but if she does, then I pick her.)

Yeah, they're pretty similar units. Not just with the same crest, but with similar weapon proficienies and both having access to Swift Strikes. And on the one hand, Seteth having the major crest does help out with its activation rate, but on the other hand, how many enemies are actually surviving being hit with Swift Strikes to the point where you even care about their counterattack? If I wanted to use both of them, I'd probably put Ferdinand into a different class. He's pretty flexible, and can make a lot of different builds work at least reasonably well. Seteth can be put into other classes too, but it generally takes more work due to his late join time, so I'd prefer to stick with him on a wyvern and change up Ferdinand.

Somewhat infuriatingly, Silver Snow isn't really a particularly good choice for really using Church units. Specifically, Cyril and Catherine are both a lot weaker in Silver Snow than they are in Verdant Wind and Azure Moon, since you can't recruit them until chapter 12. For Catherine, that means missing out on her strong early-mid game performance. For Cyril, it means that his auto levelling is done in the Commoner class, which does him no favours. For both of them, it means they miss out on all the customisation and training that you do prior to that point. I wouldn't recommend using either of them on Silver Snow. The two Church units I would be most inclined to recommend would be Seteth and Shamir. Both are strong units, and Seteth is forced deployed in Chapter 13, so is worth showing a little bit of love to even if you don't plan to use him longterm. For students, other than grabbing the ones that you need for paralogues, I'd mostly just say to pick your favourites. Pretty much anyone will work fine. Looking at supports isn't a bad way to go, though. Choosing people who support with Dorothea can be particularly nice, since they can take advantage of linked attack from her Meteor, once she has it. Manuela is a standout on that front, since her linked attack with Dorothea gives +might, or Ingrid could be good for the better rewards for their paralogue. Really though, I wouldn't stress it too much. Just go with the units you like or want to try out and it will be fine.

As someone who disliked both FF7 and BotW (yes, yes, I know, double blasphemy), I wasn't really impacted by either of these two specific examples since I wasn't interested to begin with. I'm fairly sure that both of them would have irritated me greatly if I had been interested, though. I don't think it's the case that alternate timelines are worse than faithful remakes or faithful remakes are worse than reimaginings or anything like that. Tastes vary. No matter what route a game developer takes with their remake, there are going to be some people who are completely into it and some people who really wish they'd gone in a different direction. That's just inevitable. I think that the problem comes when what the game delivers is not what was promised. Since you can't please everyone, what I want is to have an accurate description of what the game is and then I can decide for myself whether I'm part of the target audience or not. If the game isn't going to be what I wanted then I can just skip it and no harm, no foul. And I do get it. For some people, being surprised by the divergence from expectations is part of the appeal. So I can see some justification to being secretive about that sort of thing. But that sort of misdirection is always going to alienate a proportion of the player base. Ultimately, I see it as a "caveat emptor" sort of situation. I never preorder games, I usually wait until at least a week after they're released before buying them, so I can check how they're received, and I do my best to avoid being caught up in hype. That way I'm less likely to end up in the sort of situation where I will feel misled, and can instead just chalk things up as not for me and move on without any hurt feelings or wasted money.

(I'm not really familiar with Heroes, so read all this in that light.) I don't think that it's necessarily important to have hit rates per se, but I do think it's important to have some degree of randomness and some chance for things to go wrong. @Zapp Branniglenn mentioned the importance of risk management, and I'll add to that by also mentioning contingency planning. I like having to plan for what I will do in case something goes wrong. "OK, so I'll attack that unit there, and that's a 90% chance to get the kill and if it works then it will allow me to do this. But I need to do make the attack before using my other units because if it doesn't work then I still have the chance to bail out." That sort of thing. Making the game entirely deterministic wouldn't necessarily make for a bad game but it would make for an extremely different game which would appeal to different people. I'll also note that getting rid of hit rates wouldn't just be for player units but for enemy units too. I don't think that a world in which enemies always hit sounds particularly appealing. It would have a lot of implications for the way that the FE turn structure works (that is, full player phase followed by full enemey phase, as opposed to any interleaving of actions). I haven't fully thought through all the implications of that, but my gut instinct is that it wouldn't do anything good for the game. (And the implications would be different from in Heroes, due to there being so many more units involved.)

I think that, for the most part, Fire Emblem locations aren't supposed to be one-to-one analogues of real-world locations. They certainly draw inspiration from different places and cultures throughout Earth history, but then they mix and match things together and reshape it into something new. So, for instance, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to quibble over whether Nohr is more like Germany or more like Scandinavia. Better to just say that it's a mishmash of medieval Europe, with a vaguely Germanic aesthetic. I'm not really familiar with Blazing Blade, but from the name alone, I'd assume that Nabatea was one inspiratin here. Especially sicne it was reused as an inspiration in Three Houses. I don't really see this one. Yes, Ferox and Sparta both had martial cultures, but so do a whole lot of places. But beyond that, they're extremely different. I guess you could say that they were both diarchies, but the way they worked was so different that I don't really see that as a commonality. What is it about Ferox that specifically makes you see Sparta? Elise is just a name, and predates the piece of music. "Für Elise" is just German for "For Elise". It's a dedication. I wouldn't use that to link Nohr to Germany (or anywhere else). Interesting. I've always thought of Leicester as being a little akin to a later HRE, probably Habsburg era. The loose afiliation of semi-allied states, but with a single family which is hereditary leaders in all but name, and also with a lot of infighting between different duchies. And in that sense, I also see the Almyrans as (very loosely) being the Ottoman Empire, the threatening great power to the south-east of people with darker skin and a different religion (even though Almyra is more Persian than Turkish, in other ways). Though, fighting against the Ottomans is something that would also fit Poland. Though, again, given how often history rhymes, it's not surprising that it's possible to draw parallels to multiple real world states and locations.

If I have problems with it (which I sometimes do, depending on the stats/class of my Byleth), I'll just wait until Byleth has leveled up a bit and try it again. There isn't a whole lot of incentive for trying to rush to do it early. The rewards are OK, but nothing special, and having the quest active doesn't stop you from doing other tournaments, so there's really no rush. I assume that it goes away when you hti the timeskip, but I've never had a problem finishing it before that point. I believe it's DLC, yes. At least, I'm certain that it was only added to the game post-launch, and the FE wiki says it's DLC only.

I definitely wouldn't want to see new weapons added just for the sake of adding new weapons. Making the existing ones be distinct but balanced would be my main priority. That said, I think that both shuriken in Fates and gauntlets in Three Houses were well-designed and interesting, so there definitely is space to add new stuff. If they do keep experimenting with other weapon types, then I'd like to see slings and/or war fans. I've no clue how either would work mechanically, but I like their aesthetics. If they carry on with Three Houses style free reclassing, this could help solve the "oops, all wyverns" problem. It wouldn't be as big a deal that Wyvern Lords are overpowered if wyverns were a limited resource. (cf. RD Haar.) I'm not inherently opposed to guns in Fire Emblem, but having their damage be tied to the Skill stat seems weird to me. A big part of the attraction of early firearms was that they required considerably less skill to use than a bow. Something more along the lines of Radiant Dawn crossbows would make more thematic sense, maybe? But then, I never really found them very fun to use, so maybe that would be a terrible idea. (For anyone who never played Radiant Dawn, crossbows did damage purely based on their own might stat, completely ignoring the stats of their wielder.)

Unit choices are a bit of a weird one, because, ultimately, Fire Emblem already has a ton of unit choices baked into its design. There are always more characters than most people will use in a run, so we're already choosing between units all the time. Having mutually exclusive units only really matters in cases when you would like to be able to use both of them. And sure, it makes sense that you can only choose one out of Claude, Dimitri and Edelgard, or one out of Tibarn, Naesala, and Gifca. They're very strong units, and having all three of them would overshadow everyone else. But when the game asks me if I want Arran or Samson, or whether I want Deen or Sonya, then typically my answer will be "no, not really". If I don't want to use either of them, then the choice isn't meaningful.

I think that the rehabilitation of the prequels is somewhat similar to the rehabilitation of FE: Fates. People who disliked them when they first came out still dislike them now, but they just don't care as much. Time has passed, other movies have come out, they've grown invested in new things. Which means that more of the people who are talking about the prequels these days are the people who like them. And the passage of time also means that people who were kids when the prequels came out -- and are more likely to look at them with the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia -- are now in their twenties and thirties and forming a sizable portion of online discourse. I honestly expect that, in twenty years, you'll be able to find people saying that they're glad that the sequels have seen rehabilitation, but that [trilogy four] is just objectively bad. From memory, the big things that people hated about The Phantom Menace were: JarJar Binks, midi-chlorians, and child Anakin. Which I can largely agree with, although the degree of hatred and vitriol directed towards it was way out of proportion. The hatred and harassment directed at Jake Lloyd (who played young Anakin) was particularly gross and uncalled for, obviously. No movie can ever possibly be bad enough to warrant destroying the life of a ten year old with a concerted harassment campaign. Anyway, my unpopular opinion and lukewarm take is that I enjoyed Attack of the Clones the most out of the three prequel movies. It had the fewest parts that irritated me, and I thought that the arena battle (especially the first part, versus the monsters) was one of the better Star Wars set pieces. My memory of the novels is that anything written by Zahn or Stackpole was pretty great and anything written by anyone else ranged from mediocre to terrible. I definitely wasn't all that high on Roger MacBride Allen's Corellian trilogy; they were far from the worst, but I didn't love them either. Either way, I don't blame Disney for making the old EU non-canon. There was just so much damn stuff that it was all but impossible to keep up with all of it. And I can only imagine how much of a nightmare it must have been to try to write in that continuity and have to make sure that you didn't contradict anything that had gone before. Sometimes, starting over with a clean slate is the best idea.