lenticular

I quite like how combat arts can't double because it somewhat addresses the longstanding problem of speed being the one stat to rule them all. Speed is still good in SoV and TH because doubling is typically still better than using a combat art but the gulf between a fast unit and a slow one isn't quite as vast any more. Without combat arts, doubling is literally just twice as much damage; with them it's often going to be more like an extra 50% damage. It goes some way to making strong-but-slow style units more viable and increasing unit diversity.

This was a challenge run that I did recently, just for fun, but which I think is interesting enough to be worth sharing here. My goal was to beat Three Houses without ever using any items or, if that wasn't possible, to use as few items as was possible. For the parameters of this run, I considered something to be an item if it could go in the convoy, the storehouse or the barracks. This includes: all weapons, all accessories (rings, shields, etc.), all stat boosters and consumables, all exam seals, most quest items, all battalions, all lost items and gifts, all cooking ingredients, seeds and bait, and so on. As for what I didn't count as an item, these include: all magic spells, unarmed combat, the books that you can find in the monastery that grant Professor XP, gold, gifted birthday flowers, etc. If the game never generates an item that can go into one of the three storages then I considered it fair game. As for what counts as using an item: pretty much anything. Attacking with a weapon, counterattacking with a weapon, holding a weapon while attacked even if there's no counterattack (eg, holding an axe and being attacked with a bow) since you can still gain avoid by doing so, holding a weapon to change the AI's appraisal of who it should target, selling any item, completing any quest or secondary objective that requires an item, using an item for any monastery activity, giving a gift or lost item to someone, equipping a battalion for a battle, having an accessory equipped in a battle, using a consumable, using an exam seal. Basically, everything counts. The only thing that doesn't count is merely owning, picking up or acquiring items. Owning them is fine; using them is not. The main difficulties of this run are obvious. No items means no weapons and it also means that most units won't ever be able to promote since exam seals are also forbidden. The prohibition on all weapons means that the only ways to attack are with spells or unarmed combat, though everyone starts the game as a Noble or a Commoner and so have only half magic uses and no access to unarmed combat. I did the run on Normal difficulty, Classic mode, with no online and no New Game+ but with DLC, and doing the Crimson Flower route. Other than playing without items, the only other restriction was that exploiting glitches (or any other form of cheating, not that I know any) was also banned. Grinding was permitted when it was absolutely necessary (which happened once), but avoided when possible. So as not to bury the lede too much, here's how I did: I was able to complete the game only ever using two items: one weapon attack in the prologue and then one quest item in chapter 2. I don't believe it is even theoretically possible to beat the game without at least these two item uses. The early game was completed with a bunch of Nobles/Commoners using magic but they were eventually replaced by Balthus as a Brawler (by recruiting him after chapter 6 so he gets the class for free), Edelgard as a Dancer and Byleth as a magic-using Enlightened One (these being two of the few available promotions that don't take items). Chapter by chapter summaries were written as I played, so may be a little bit disjointed in places. Part I: White Clouds. Part II: Crimson Flower Final stats and closing thoughts: Questions and comments are welcome. I'm especially interested if anyone can think of any tricks that I missed, if anyone has thoughts on how doable this would be on harder difficulties, or if anyone has other ideas for fun or interesting challenge runs.

Line of Lances: 6/10. This is one of my personal favourites, for reasons that are maybe not entirely justified. The big selling point here is that it's a gambit with two charges that can hit all four squares of a monster's armour in a single shot. And only Line of Lances and the gambits from the Lord Battalions can say that. Which is why I love it. But objectively, being able to hit all four squares isn't all that much stronger than the small cross area effect that hits three squares. It still takes two of these to take down all armour, or it still takes one of these plus a short line gambit plus a regular attack. There really isn't that much difference. There definitely are circumstances where the box is better, like if you're doing a box gambit plus three regular attacks, but it's not a huge difference. Likewise, the box can also be better against regular enemies, since it hits six squares and (hot take alert!) six is a bigger number than five. Again, though, it's a fairly small difference. The closest comparison among the gambits we've already graded is Fusillade. They have the same might, same accuracy and same number of charges. Fusillade was effective against fliers; this is effective against cavalry. I consider these effects to be approximately equally as strong. Then Line of Lances has the better area effect but Fusillade has the range going for it. Again, these two things roughly cancel out and leave the two gambits at about the same level. Subjectively, I really want this to be better than Fusillade but objectively I just don't think it is, so I give it the same grade. Linked Horses: 4/10. "Worse Blaze" is a good way of looking at this. For the purposes of breaking monster armour, they're basically equivalent. Against troops, Blaze gives you a 50% larger area effect and it gives you fire as a secondary effect. This gives you an extra plus two points of might which I absolutely don't care about. Single-use gambits need to be impactful, and this one just isn't. Battleground Cleanup: 2/10. If Linked Horses is worse Blaze, Battleground Cleanup is Worse Linked Horses. I just don't ever want to be using these high-might low-accuracy gambits if I can help it. Superficially, it makes some amount of sense. It's like comparing Fire to Fimbulvetr. Do you want to have Fire with its high uses, high accuracy and low might, or do you want to have Fimbulvetr with its low accuracy, low uses and high might? And in the case of black magic the answer is that you want to have both of them. (Not that Fimbulvetr is a great spell, of course, but it's still nicer to have it than not.) Except that in this case, you can't choose to have both. Your unit has to choose between either Fire or Fimbulvetr and it's hard tot hink of many circumstances where i'd pick Fimbulvetr if I had that choice. Exacerbating this problem is that damage isn't really what I want to be using gambits for. Sure, they can do damage, but I have so many other ways of doing damage. Regular attacks and spells all do damage as well. Not to mention that a lot of bosses take reduced damage from gambits, which makes gambits that focus on damage even worse. On the other hand, there are abilities that gambits have that regular attacks and magic just don't. Regular attacks can't rattle. Regular attacks can't take down a monster's full armour in only two attacks. Regular attacks can't do amazing support attacks like Stride or Retribution. Gambits can do all these things. So why, when I have only a limited number of gambits per map, am I ever going to use them to replicate effects that I can already do anyway? The answer is that I'm not. Maybe this is a playstyle thing and there are other ways of playing that can make use of this sort of gambit, but it's not for me.

Stat caps are largely irrelevant in Three Houses since you'll pretty much never reach them. The only times they'll come up are if you're deliberately training someone against type and run up against one of the very low caps (eg, Lysithe's strength or Raphael's magic) or if you're deliberately grinding someone up to levels that are far beyond what's actually useful. Actual endgame stats are typically far lower than unit caps. It also seems weird to call this power creep given that it's a totally different game which is differently balanced to previous games in the series. A point of strength in Three Houses is not the same as a point of strength in Shadow Dragon or Path of Radiance or any other game because mechanics are slightly different, enemies are different, etc. It's not as if you can take a character from Three Houses and send them over to Radiant Dawn and suddenly trivialise the fight against Ashera. It's its own game and is balanced only against itself, not against anything that came before.

It could also have been a nice way to differentiate between similar gambits based on their accuracy and damage. We're currently looking at three gambits that have different hit and might but are otherwise identical. One of them being (relatively) high might and low hit, another being high hit and low might, and the third being somewhere in the middle for both of them. If someone told me that they were called Group Lance Attack, Group Sword Attack and Group Axe Attack then I would intuitively be able to remember not only that they were related, but also which one was which. ("Group [Weapon] Attack" is a boring and very dry name scheme, but it gets my point across.) Or they could have gone with minor additional effects based on the represented weapon type. This already exists with the bow-based gambits having effectiveness against flying units, but they could also have done something similar for gambits based on other weapons. Maybe lance gambits could have had been effective against horses, axe gambits could have been effective against armour, and sword gambits could have had extra crit chance? Just little effects that wouldn't come up very often but would be nice to have and really help differentiate things.

Comparing the "Front" are effect to the "Short Line" are effect, I think there are pluses and minuses to each. "Front" covers one more square, which is good. But there are times when you can only get at one side of a monster and then being able to reach to the squares in the back with "Short Line" is useful. "Short Line" is also much more common than "Front". On the one hand, this means that adding in a "Front" gives more options. But on the other hand, it means that my brain is better trained to use "Short Line" to its best advantage. Overall, I don't think there's much to call between the two. I think that "Front" probably has the slight but it's only slight. Mad Melee: 5/10. Outside of the area effect, this is identical to Disturbance, so I give it the same rating for the same reasons. Group Lance Attack: 3/10. This is the same basic problem as the repositional gambits. It takes a gambit (in this case, Mad Melee) whose only good point was its reliability, and then it gets rid of the reliability. If you're going to do that, you'd better replace it with something else, and this just doesn't. 2 points of might isn't nothing, but it may as well be. This just doesn't have anything to recommend it. Random Shot: 2/10. And you can count yourself lucky to even get that much, Random Shot. There just isn't any area where this excels. It has bad accuracy, one of the worst area effects in the game, and no secondary effect. Its might is decent enough but not a standout. Having two uses is better than one, at least, but that's nothing rare. There's just no reason to ever want this gambit. Whatever niche you're looking to fill, there are always other commonly available gambits that do it better. With other awful gambits like Onslaught or Absorption, at least they offer something that other gambits don't. This one doesn't. It's just bad. About the only positive thing I can say about this one is that it isn't bugged. Or rather, it probably isn't bugged. I'm not sure anyone has ever used it to find out. I certainly haven't. Actually, you know what? I've talked myself into changing my mind. This doesn't even deserve 2/10. I'm giving Random Shot: 1/10. Line of Lances, Sea of Swords, Avalanche of Axes, Barrage of Bowfire, Flurry of Fists, Maelstrom of Magic.

One possibility would be to not have a distinct set of two-handed weapons, but to allow all weapons to be wielded with either one hand or two. Then if you choose to use two hands, then you treat the weapon as if it was only half its weight. Maybe give an accuracy bonus as well. That way, extra weight and lower accuracy could still be used as a trade-off with more powerful weapons, with the option of either wielding them with one hand and living with the drawback or using two hands to mitigate the drawback, btu at the cost of not being able to use the second hand for a shield or other item.

I'm not a big fan of the triangle AoE gambits. In theory, hitting more tiles is great, but in practice I find that a lot of it is hitting at air. With Assault Troops, it's usually not too much of a problem to find a chance to hit three enemies with it. With Blaze or Poison Tactics, it's considerably rarer for the enemies to clump up into exactly the right pattern for you to hit 6 of them. Against monsters, these can hit all four squares but so can gambits like Linked Horses or Line of Lances, and they get two charges. It's also worth noting that to fully break a monsters armour with this you need two charges of Blaze OR one charge of Blaze, one charge of Disturbance and one regular attack. Compare that to Fusillade, where you need two charges of Fusillade OR one charge of Fusillade, one charge of Disturbance and one regular attack. Sure, it's better to use Blaze and three regular attacks than Fusillade and four regular attacks, but that doesn't come up often. The best niche for these is hitting wide formations of enemy troops, and they do perform that niche reasonably well. The problem is that that isn't a niche I find particularly valuable. I mostly use offensive gambits either when I need to take down a monster's armour or when I have one or two enemies who I need to rattle so they can't kill one of my units on enemy phase. And these two gambits just aren't great for those use cases. They get the job done, but having only one charge really hurts. I know there have been times when I've had Blaze and really wished I had Disturbance instead, but also times when I've had Disturbnace but really wished I had Blaze instead, which leads me to think I should be giving them the same mark. 5/10 for both Blaze and Poison Tactics. While I do generally prefer both hit over might and poison over fire, I don't think there's enough difference between these two to separate them by a full mark. And then there's Absorption. Oh boy. Throughout this series so far, I've been consistent in highly valuing hit, so you can probably guess where i'm going with this. 30 hit is bad. It's the lowest hit out of any gambit in the game, and there are only three other gambits that even get as low as 40 hit, and they're all pretty bad. Granted, it is possible to mitigate the low hit with high charm, gambit boosts, hit +20, etc. but I'd much rather use a gambit where I don't necessarily have to use all of those things. Especially since everything else about this gambit says "needs to be able to hit reliably". If you want to get the most out of its area effect, you need to wade neck-deep into the middle of the enemy. Which would be fine if you could then reliably hit and rattle them all, but you can't. The healing ability would also be more useful if you could rely on it. Not great, mind, but more useful. The ideal use case is when you're at low health, use it, and go back up to full health. Except that you can't rely on it, which means that you have to plan on also having a healer available anyway. Nothing about the way this gambit is built makes sense to me and every time I've tried to use it, it's felt clunky, awkward, unreliable, and generally no fun to use. 2/10 for Absorption. I agree with this.

Star Fox and F-Zero both have the same problem. They were both initially conceived as little more than tech demos (for Mode 7 and the Super FX coprocessor respectively). Once the tech moved on and they stopped being visually impressive, there just wasn't that much left for either series. Star Fox has just taken longer to die.

The ones I'm most likely to pick up are the new Life Is Strange (though I'll probably grab it on PC) and the Advance Wars remake (never played the originals but I am curious). Everything else is either "wait to see what the reviews look like" or just a hard no for me. I wish that the new Zelda Game and Watch actually included the original Zelda Game and Watch game. I understand why they didn't, since a dual-screen clamshell design would be more expensive to make and not really do anything for the other games. And it wasn't even a particularly good game to begin with. But I still wish they had done it anyway. Would have been a big nostalgia blast.

Let's compare sales figures a moment. Going off sales figures from Wikipedia (Switch list, 3DS list), with caveats about how they may be out of date, etc. but taking them as rough estimates, for the Switch we have Star Allies at 2.93 million, Three Houses at 2.87 million and Tropical Freeze at 2.65 million (only counting Switch sales; it also sold about 2 million on Wii U). All of them are pretty comparable, and all of them are behind games like Mario Tennis Aces, Clubhouse Games, and 1-2-Switch. On the 3DS, FE Fates has 3.00 million, DKC Returns 3D has 2.87 million, and Kirby: Triple Deluxe has 2.61 million. Again, they're all pretty comparable. And they're all extremely solid numbers that are plenty high enough to make sure the sequels keep coming. But none of them are setting the world alight. They're not exactly Breath of the Wild or New Horizons, are they? Metroid is in a bit of a weird situation because of the lengthy delays to Metroid Prime 4 and it could easily go two ways now. If all of the delays have been to make sure that they release an excellent game then it has the potential to sell really well and launch the franchise up to the next level. On the other hand, if it gets caught in still further development hell, takes forever and isn't very good when it finally does come out, it could effectively kill the series. Time will tell. I just don't see that happening. Even if you add together the sales from Three Houses, FE Warriors and TMS, all of them together are less than a quarter of the sales of Breath of the Wild. And I don't agree with your assessment that Zelda is a quality over quantity series. Just for the Switch, it already has Breath of the Wild, Link's Awakening, Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity, and Cadence of Hyrule. There's also Skyward Sword coming out next month and the sequel to Breath of the Wild looming on the horizon. I would also say that Zelda is a much more popular genre than Fire Emblem. No matter how good Fire Emblem gets, the market for tactical RPGs just isn't as big as the market for action adventure games.

It's inevitable that at some point Smash will need to start cutting back on its roster. Having it always grow from game to game just isn't sustainable, and at some point there absolutely will come a point where they have to say that enough is enough. Whether that's in the next game in the series or several games down the line, I don't know. And I don't have a problem with that. There are plenty of characters that could easily be cut without losing too much from the game. Yeah, there'll always be a few hardcore fans who will be sad about any removal, but I can't exactly see a deluge of angry letters arriving at Nintendo offices if they cut -- for instance -- Roy or ROB, Pichu or Palutena. The one thing that they have to do, though, is justify the removals by also adding something else at the same time. If it's just "here's a cut-down version of what went before that is objectively worse than the game you already own; please give us $60 now and then more money over time as we drip-feed in DLC which sells back to you what the previous game already had" then that'll be a hard pass from me. They'd probably make truckloads of cash if they did, but the longterm cost in terms of reputation and brand value would be too great. Given that this is Smash, the new stuff would probably be new characters (removing 20 less popular characters but adding 10 new ones, for instance) but it could be anything, really. There just has to be some hook that people are excited by and not only cuts. Agree with this. It was already on shaky ground by Melee, honestly. I remember looking up the unlocks online for Melee, and leaving my Gamecube on overnight to satisfy a "number of hours played" requirement for one of them. I think it was Mewtwo, but I might be misremembering. It didn't really add anything to the game even then. If there are going to be unlockables, then they shouldn't be for something so important as characters. Most people are just going to look up how to unlock their favourite character if they aren't available from the start. If the developers want to include unlockable easter eggs again, it should be for smaller stuff like music tracks or trophies, stuff that will still be nice to find but that people aren't going to just immediately look up. Fire Emblem isn't remotely on the same level as Mario, Zelda or Pokémon. Not in terms of sales figures, fan-base, overall cultural recognition, anything. It's much bigger now than it was when the original Super Smash Bros came out on N64, but that isn't saying much. At best, it's now in the tier of franchises that sit a rung or two down the ladder like Kirby, Donkey Kong and Metroid. Still a pretty good place for it to be, but far from the top. If you're looking for a new behemoth IP that didn't exist at the time of the original Super Smash Bros, then look to Animal Crossing which is legitimately huge in a way that Fire Emblem can only dream of being.

Honestly, I don't think I'd enjoy that. That sort of system works well in RPGs where you have a single main character or a small party, but juggling inventories and equipment to that degree on as many characters as you get in a Fire Emblem style game? That mostly sounds like it would become a chore pretty fast. It's near impossible to provide that many different meaningful choices for equipment, so it quickly devolves into "I've already decided how I want to do my armour progressions, and now I have to go through the busywork of actually doing it". If you're having a dozen characters, each with six different armour pieces and they're upgrading each piece 4 times over the course of the game, that's 288 different upgrades. Which is way too many to be able to stay fun.

In terms of area effect, the small cross is just straight up better than the long line. Yes, there are a few occasions where the enemy just lines up exactly for a long line, but generally speaking I'd always prefer the small line if everything else is equal. It's better against individual units (with the potential to hit 5 units rather than just 4) and it's better against monsters, being able to take down an extra piece of armour with each use. Extra range is also nice. For infantry units (ie, those without Canto), extra range means that they can rattle an enemy and not be in range for a counter attack on enemy phase. It also means they can take down a monster's armour and leave open the space for melee units to get in and exploit the broken armour. The bonus damage against fliers is less relevant than on Flash Fire Arrows due to the lower base might, but it's still a pure upside. Poison is underwhelming and almost completely irrelevant, but it's also pure upside that's never going to be bad. Of note, out of all the gambits that have both 60 hit and 2 uses (ie, the gold standard for reliability), the only one with a better AoE than Poisoned Arrows is Wave Attack, which is deliberately overpowered. Everything considered, I'm going to give Fusillade 6/10 and Poisoned Arrows 7/10.

Three Houses also has the benefit of both bare-fist fighting and spells that regenerate every battle and don't require items at all. With the possible exception of very early levels, it's probably possible to beat it without using any items at all, let alone any bought items.

Lyn: Likable but unremarkable. Eirika: An idiot. Ephraim: A different kind of idiot. Ike: Zero shits given, marches to the beat of his own drum, I like him. Elincia: She's a sweetie. Micaiah: The right sort of character for the sometimes grey morality of her game. Marth: Bland white-meat hero type. Chrom: No strong feelings. He's fine, I guess? Lucina: I don't really care for the children mechanic, but she's interesting and charismatic enough that I don't mind her as an individual. Robin: I don't like avatars. Corrin: I still don't like avatars, and Corrin exemplifies many of their worst traits. Alm: Has the same white-meat hero problems as Marth, but the presentation, dialogue and voice acting is charming enough for me to forgive him. Celica: Has the same being an idiot problems as Eirika, but the presentation, dialogue and voice acting is charming enough for me to forgive her. Edelgard: My opinions on her have been eaten my desire to avoid online discourse about her. Claude: Very charming, charismatic, likable and overall fun, but doesn't actually do all that much. Dimitri: I don't find him likable but I do find him compelling. Has a good personal arc. Byleth: I still don't like avatars. Itsuki: The straight man who gives his supporting cast their time to shine.

Assault Troops: 5/10. I'm giving this the same rating as Disturbance, but while I was torn between 4 and 5 for Disturbance, I was torn between 5 and 6 here. I always value getting this on Jeralt's Mercenaries at the start of the game, but I think that's more to do with scarcity than quality. If I had a bunch of Assault Troop Battalions and exactly one that had Disturbance, I'm sure I'd love the extra accuracy and reliability. As is, I think that it's a trade-off. Assault troops are undeniably better against massed ranks of infantry, but Disturbance is better for stripping armour from monsters or when there's that one enemy that you absolutely need to rattle. Flash-Fire Arrows: 6/10. I'm honestly not sure I've ever actually used this one. It seems that the most prominent battalion that has it is the Edmund Troops, which is the reward from a fairly late paralogue and has hybrid strength/magic stat boosts, so I'm not surprised that I skipped it. Regardless, this is theorycraft more than actual experience. the burning effect on gambits isn't one I really care about either way. Occasionally it comes in useful, occasionally it's detrimental, most of the time it's just there. So the question is whether the lower might but bonus damage against fliers changes the rating at all relative to Assault Troops. The lower damage isn't really a big deal, but the bonus damage can be nice, albeit situational. At 21 effective might is up to the point where you can do some decent damage actually start to think about scoring a kill with this. Only against fliers, of course, but that's still better than nothing. If you can kill one unit and then rattle three (or even one) unit behind them, then that's a great use of a turn. I think that's enough overall to push this to a higher score than Assault Troops.

That's a fair way to look at it, yeah. Although I think that there is still a fairly substantial difference in how high the investment is for other builds. Getting to B+ in a neutral skill is going to be a lot less work than getting to A in a weakness. But yeah, the three you said are definitely the builds that take the least investment, by a fairly wide margin. I partly agree with both of these. I think there are definite advantages to both Assassin and Trickster and which is better is probably situational, largely depending on which other units you're using and whether they give access to warp and -- to a lesser extent -- silence. If I already had another warper, then I think I'd probably prefer to put Manuela into Assassin; if I didn't have one then I'd probably go with Trickster. As for Manuela being fragile, it's worth noting that her defensive bases and growths aren't bad at all. She has 25+50% hp and 5+30% defense. For comparison, that's identical growths and only 1 less in each of her bases than Seteth, for instance. As I understand it, her big problem is that she spends her first 15 levels autoleveling as a priest with terrible priest growths, which means that she has pretty weak stats when you pick her up. That said, if you can catch her back up with a stat booster or two, she does have the growths to be able to keep up and not need perpetual babying. I hadn't done the maths, but I was assuming that she'd be able to put out decently more damage with gauntlets as a War Cleric than with swords as a Trickster. Let's actually look at some of the maths now. Hexblade gives +7 might and a silver sword+ is +13 might, so that's +20 might. On the gauntlets side of things, aura knuckles are +2 might and fistfaire gives +5, for a total of +7. So, if we assume that everything else is equal (same magic stat, same enemy res stat, same presence/absence of fiendish blow, etc.) then a single hit with hexblade will do 13 points of damage more than a single hit with aura knuckles. However, the gauntlets are guaranteed to double. That means that the break-even point is 26 damage. If your Hexblad does 26 damage, then your double attack with aura knuckles would also do 26 damage. If you're doing more than that with Hexblade then the aura knuckles would have done more still; if you're doing less than that then they would have been less still. There's honestly not much to call between the two in this situation. Swords are probably better some of the time, gauntlets at other times. However, there's also the possibility for the gauntlets to quad. Here, the break even point is between 17 and 18. If your Hexblade is hitting for 17 or under then a quad with aura knuckles would be better; if it's hitting for 18 or more then you'd have been better off punching. Having looked at the numbers (not exhaustively, there are other things that could still be considered), I'd say that if you put aside the ease of getting into the class and only consider how well it works once you're there, then Trickster is better on maddening but War Cleric is better on Normal or Hard. On maddening, you won't have the speed to be quadding as many enemies, you'll be more concerned about the damage from the counter attack, and you're going to be in more positions where 17-26 points of chip damage is actually relevant. Below maddening, though, I think that War Cleric has a real upside in terms of maximum damage potential and being able to one-round more enemies. Sadly, these are both undoubtedly true. Alas. Poor Manuela.

This was touched on a little in the thread about the bishop class, but I figured it could use its own topic. What is Manuela's best class? She's a unit who has some considerable strengths: her spell list has some real standouts like Warp and Bolting; she has a strength in flying; she learns the Hexblade combat art; she has a speed of 8+60%. All of this is great. She also has some glaring weaknesses, though: weakness in Reason; no healing spells more powerful than Heal; late recruitment; mediocrity in both strength (10+35%) and magic (8+35%). It's no secret that she's an awkward unit to use with few obvious synergies among her strengths. When I've tried to use her, I've generally been left with a feeling of "this is OK, but...". I've certainly never felt that I have found the one true build that really makes her sing, if you'll forgive the pun. For the purpose of this question, consider "best class" to include considerations of how difficult it is to get to the class and how well she'll perform across the whole game up to that point, not just how good she'll be once she gets there. Some options, with pros and cons: Assassin Pros: Easy for her to get into, swordfaire for extra damage, super fast Cons: No magic, no flying Bishop Pros: Probably the easiest endgame class to certify for, gives a second use of warp Cons: Does nothing to help her offense, horrible movement, her healing is still almost non-existant Trickster Pros: Combines her sword and faith strengths, half magic rounds up so has no effect on Warp uses and minimal effect on Silence uses Cons: No -faire skill leads to mediocre damage output, no flying War Cleric Pros: Fistfaire and inherent brave effect on gauntlets for extra damage, half magic rounds up so has no effect on Warp uses and minimal effect on Silence uses Cons: Late recruitment and no strength in gauntlets make this slow to start, no flying Dark Flier Pros: Flying is really good, magic is really good, tomefaire for extra damage Cons: Has to struggle through her weakness in reason, bolting is the only real standout on her reason list so black tomefaire doesn't offer all that much, magic flying battalions are in very short supply Falcon Knight Pros: Flying, as super speedy as assassin, lancefaire is an option, sword growth bonus means that's also an option Cons: No magic, magic lance options are limited at best so you're restricted to strength builds if you want the -faire, has to work through neutrality in lances, good flying battalions are in short supply Gremory Pros: Almost a straight upgrade on bishop, double uses for warp and bolting, one more movement than bishop Cons: Has to struggle through her weakness in reason, movement may be better than bishop but still sucks Mortal Savant Pros: Swordfaire, magic Cons: Requires training in reason, huge loss of speed relative to assassin, no flying Wyvern Lord Pros: Flying, Wyvern Lord is a really good class, axefaire for damage, bolt axes are readily available if you want to focus on magic damage, skill requirements synergise well with backfilling for Death Blow and Darting Blow Cons: No magic, has to work through neutrality in axes, good flying battalions are in short supply Something else entirely? Pros: Nobody will see it coming! Cons: Probably a terrible idea? Of the above, I've tried her as an assassin, a trickster and a falcon knight. They've all been reasonable but not great. Falcon Knight was probably the strongest of them, but that might just be because Falcon Knight is the best of the three classes on its own. The ones that I am most curious to try are War Cleric and Wyvern Lord. Anyone have any thoughts? What classes have you tried for her? How did they work out? What do you think is her best class overall?

I found them brokenly powerful almost to the point of completely trivialising the game. The enemy AI always seems to prefer targeting them over actual real units (presumably because they're trying to maximise damage and the summons have bad defenses?) so having a decent number of invokes up seemed to make everyone functionally immortal and let me pick off the enemies at will.

Disturbance: 5/10. The good part to this is that it has 60% base hit rate and two uses. The bad part is that it has bad AoE, bad might, bad range, and no secondary effect. And while these are definitely big downsides, I do like its reliability. If all you're looking to do is rattle one or two enemies that you can't kill this turn or take down a single tile of monster armour to create an opening for your other units, then this is basically perfect for the job, especially for units with lower charm who will really value the hit rate. Onslaught: 2/10. The shove ends up being bad more often than good. Yes, there can be occasional cases where it's exactly what you need, but there can also be occasional cases where it's exactly what you don't need. And as a general rule, once an enemy is rattled, I'm more likely to want them nearer to my army, not further away. I also don't like the repositional gambits in general because I am prone to forget about them, and anything that increases my cognitive load and increses the likelihood of mistakes is bad. Especially when they aren't offering any useful benefit in return. Meanwhile, when comaring this to Disturbance, you lose 10% hit and gain 4 might. Given that gambits are more useful for armour breaking and rattling than for raw damage, losing hit is significant but gaining damage -- especially a fairly paltry 4 points of damage -- is not. Assembly: 3/10. Better than Onslaught because the draw back effect is actually more likely to be useful than harmful, and the might loss is largely irrelevant. Still not good though. Reversal: 1/10. I've never actually seen the bug that Dark Holy Elf mentioned, but I'm willing to trust him on it, and that would definitely make this awful. Especially since I was only going to give it 2/10 otherwise, since it has most of the same problems as Onslaught. Lure: 3/10. I feel much the same about this one as I do about Assembly. The reposition effect is maybe a small net positive, but only maybe and only small. Otherwise this is just a worse Disturbance that throws away the one thing that's actually good about Disturbance.

It's probably worth considering how you want to account for difficulty. There are definitely some gambits which I would rate considerably differently depending on difficulty. My preference is to rate each one according to whichever difficulty it performs the best in, but there are other possibilities too. But ideally everyone will be using the same criteria. Also, excel spreadsheets probably aren't the best way to share information. Not everyone has software that opens them (I don't!) and not everyone is willing to download files that can potentially contain malware (I'm not!). Beyond that: yeah, I'm interested in participating. I'll probably end up missing at least a few, but I'm definitely interested.

My assumption would be that this happened the other way around. That is, I assume she was originally conceived for storyline reasons ("let's have a female Ram villager" "she could have a crush on Alm") and that the new promotion line was created specifically for the character. That said, since they did make female villager a thing, they could have created a new one for Celica's party as well.

A logo reveal is actually exactly what I don't expect. I think that either they're far enough along in development that they can show something meaningful or they're not going to show anything at all. Nintendo seem to be trending towards shorter gaps between announcement and release, with the exceptions being for marquee hype-generating titles like the Breath of the Wild sequel. I can especially see them wanting to be careful with Fire Emblem after the repeated delays to Three Houses.

Oh, man. That's tricky. While there are lots of great games from the 70s, there aren't a lot of great game characters. I just don't see that there's any way to really get a viable character out of Asteroids, Pong, Breakout, Lunar Lander, etc. An alien from Space Invaders would probably be the best choice. It's an iconic design, the game was massively successful both in Japan and the West, and there is no other game that is more evocative of the start of the golden age of arcade games in the late 70s. Yeah, the move pool would have to be created basically from scratch, but that's been the case for other characters too (eg Captain Falcon, ROB) so that shouldn't be a problem. As outside picks, how about: Lord British (Ultima series): I've never really been into Ultima, but it has a long legacy, and the character did debut in the 70s. I don't think it ever really saw much/any popularity in Japan, though. Mole (Whac-A-Mole): Sure, going into electro-mechanical games is a bit of a leap, but it's no more out there than a character like ROB. This has the advantage of having been popular in both Japan and the west, still having some cultural relevance today, and actually being a recognisable character rather than just a line or a geometric shape. The Adventurer (Colossal Cave or Zork): The disadvantages here are obvious. They were text only games, so the entire character design would have to be done from scratch. I don't believe they have any relevance or history at all in Japan. But the plus side is that it would be easy to come up with a moveset based on items and situations described in the game. Sherrif (Sherrif): The only real advantage here is that it's a Nintendo character. Still, exploring the more obscure parts of the history of Nintendo has always been part of the appeal of Smash, so that's not nothing. Ultimately, though, I think that Space Invaders is the only game from the 70s that I think has even a tiny chance. Other possibilities can be interesting to think about, but I don't think any of them would really work. Beyond that, even if I wanted to add another character from the golden age of arcade games, I think I'd prefer adding another character from the early 80s instead. Games like Frogger, Dig Dug, Mr. Do, Pengo, Q*Bert, Paperboy, etc. have much more interesting characters than most of what the 70s had to offer.