lenticular

Begone, Eirika! Welcome, Clair!

If that's what works for you, then I'm not going to stop you, but your experience is far from universal here. Many people can and do play it without her, and I don't think it was helpful to the original poster to imply that she is necessary or that he did anything wrong.

I strongly disagree. His recruitment is fine. Lysithea is a perfectly reasonable unit, but not so good that it's a mistake not to recruit her. If he needs someone with Warp, he has both Linhardt and Manuela. Unless you're in a heavily optimised situation like a LTC or speedrun the only relevant questions are whether you have enough characters to fill out a complete roster in the endgame (he does) and whether you're using characters that you like (which I'm guessing he also does).

Mermaid? Narwhal Rider? Walrus Laguz? Seriously, though, as others have said, purely aquatic units would probably be a mess. The only way they'd actually work would be if the game was designed from its inception to be able to feature them. If we had an archipelago setting and a maritime theme and a lot of the maps were on boats at sea and even the land maps were all on the coast and there were specific mechanics in place for marine units... then maybe. Maybe. I'm not even 100% convinced that it would work then, but it might. Except that it would also be a huge divergence from standard Fire Emblem fare, so isn't something we're likely to ever see.

Remove Bernadetta, add L'Arachel. Attempt to revive Catherine despite recognising the abject futility of the act.

Cyril isn't really pro-Church as much as he's pro-Rhea. He outright states that he isn't actually a believer in one of his supports with Byleth: Byleth: Are you a believer? Cyril: Nah, not really. And Lady Rhea told me it's OK if I don't show an interest unless I feel like it, and I haven't so far, but... I just want to take good care of the things she cares about.

Remove Lorenz. Add the other Lorenz. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) And revive Dorothea.

Four boons really isn't all that unusual. If I've counted right, there are 15 characters who have at least four boons, and then a further 8 who have three boons and a budding talent, which is almost as good. Which is about half of all characters. Cyril and Seteth both have five boons, and Balthus has a borderline-ridiculous five boons and a budding talent. I don't think four boons is even a little bit excessive. There are a fair few characters (eg Ferdinand, Leonie, Gilbert) who are neutral in both faith and reason who have no business going anywhere near magic builds. Just having garbage for magic growths and/or spell lists is more than enough to keep them as purely physical fighters. In this particular case, starting as level 30 with no weapon ranks in Reason or Faith would also be a strong reason to stay away from magic builds. Not that it's really harmful to add in a bane (though I'd still prefer a Reason bane) but I don't think it's necessary.

I dunno. Part of the charm of Smash Bros is that it's a very casual-friendly game that anyone can pick up quickly and easily. Sure, the skill ceiling is high, but the barrier for entry is very low. Switching from a three button control scheme to a four button control scheme isn't going to make it that much harder to pick up, but even fairly small increases in complexity are going to be enough to drive some people away. It's not that they couldn't still get inot the game if they tried, but it could easily be enough to give some people a bad first impression and make them not really want to try. Keeping the entry level as simple as possible is important for a game like Smash Bros.

I'm not going to address any of your proposed story changes because some of what I would have to say would get dangerously close to Edelgard vs Rhea debate and I have zero desire to relitigate any of that nonsense. As such, I'll limit my feedback to this: This breaks several existing conventions, and while it is possible to break convention, it's generally best to only do so when there's a good reason. Specifically, for everyone else, having a strength in a weapon skill is tied to learning combat arts in that skill. Nobody else learns combat arts for weapons they aren't strong in (and conversely, nobody is strong in a weapon they don't learn combat arts for). As such, Judith should either have a strength in axes or lose those axe combat arts. Next, for Faith spells, literally every other character in the game learns Heal at D and Nosferatu at D+ and then has at least one more Faith spell past that (commonly recover at C). I don't see any reason why Judith should not follow this pattern. This one is slightly less of a hard and fast rule, but I also don't think she should come with a bane in Faith. Almost universally, a bane in Faith is for characters with a good storyline reaspm to have it. It's for characters who aren't from Fódlan or who have a strong antipathy to the Church. There is one exception to this rule (Hilda), so I can't say it's something you absolutely need to follow, but Judith never struck me as particularly impious, so I don't think it's appropriate for her. Also, unrelatedly, I cannot get behind any change that would get rid of God Shattering Star entirely. I just can't. I love that track.

What is with Fates and continually trying to push Azura as some sort of a combat unit. No. Bad Fates. Stop that. Anyway, my memory of the level is fuzzy and I am not feeling well today, so this is a genuine question asked because I don't remember the answer. Is there any indication in the dialogue that the chest has a brass naginata and that this is the intended strategy, or is it just something you're magically supposed to know? Or guess?

Oof. Of all the possible units to lose, the dancer (or singer, whatever) has got to be one of the worst. Still, on the plus side, at least it wasn't your lord this time, which is definitely even worse. I have to ask, though, what were you even doing moving Azura about in the first place? Isn't she perfectly safe if you just keep her in her starting location and let the patrolling guard continually miss her? Or am I misremembering that? As for the level itself, I'm not a fan. The very cramped geography combined with all of the debuffs encourages turtling and slow play and wasn't any fun to play. Past that, the reinforcements are among the worst reinforcements in Conquest. They aren't ambush spawns, at least, but the spawn condition is not at all obvious, there are a lot of them arriving in a single turn, and depending on where your units are when they spawn, it's quite easy to get caught up in a way that you can't realistically escape from.

You know, that's a fair point. I don't personally value wrath/vantage builds at all so I don't include them as part of my calculus, but if you are trying to use them (or any of the Defiant skills) then Goodie Basket is definitely worse.

I just had a random idea and I'm not sure whether I like it or hate it. They could have differentiated Silver Snow by having it feature the return of Sothis. Not in corporeal form, just coming back as the voice in Byleth's head again. As an idea of how it could have worked, Seteth could have told Byleth all the secrets that Rhea had been keeping from her, and in return Byleth tells him everything she knows about Sothis. The two of them then realise that a seed of Sothis's consciousness still remains and work on restoring it. Yeah, it would need work to develop it into something fleshed out, but I literally jsut had the thought.

If you have ambitions to eventually see all the supports across multiple playthroughs, then you should prioritse Dimtri's, Dedue's and Gilberts, since they're Azure Moon exclusive and therefore the hardest ones to pick up. Beyond that, I agree with most of the ones already mentioned, but will also add Hanneman/Manuela and Catherine/Shamir. Both are based on relationships that already existed long before the start of the game, which I really enjoyed.

That is weird. Genuinely. Or, at least, I find it weird. I had zero emotional investment in any of them. Conquest really loves to do this. I think that of all the FE games that I've played, it's the one that has the most friendly new recruits arriving mid-battle. Elise, Silas, Arthur, Effie, Niles, Odin, Camilla, Beruka, Selena, Benny and Charlotte all show up that way (in 5 waves across 4 levels), and it annoys me. Partly because of how overplayed it is, and partly because it makes it that much harder to plan for each level before starting it.

It also comes up in Linhardt and Petra's supports, which are pretty much all about how he knows enough theory to be able to usefully instruct her, but is completely useless in practice. For instance: "The spear isn't really my area of expertise, but I've seen enough training to understand the mechanics. I believe I can use that understanding to further help you improve your spearwork."

A history, yes; a current, no. I was quite into the genre around the boom period of the early to mid nineties. Street Fighter II and the original Mortal Kombat, obviously, but also stuff that I never hear anyone talk about these days. World Heroes was another of my favourites did anyone play that? I mained Rasputin Rasputin because I loved how ridiculous his big glowy magic hands were. Or there was Pit-Fighter. I never played the arcade version so that might have been good, but the port to the Amstrad CPC was the single worst game I have ever had the misfortune of playing. Nearly 30 years since and I'm still bitter about the money I spent on that. I kinda lost interest after that. Partly because of how much Capcom were milking Street Fighter, partly because I didn't really care for the early jumps to 3D, and partly because of other priorities in my life at the time. The only fighting game I've really played since then is Smash Bros. Which is Smash Bros. I sometimes feel tempted to revisit the genre and see how far it's come, except that all I ever seem to hear about it is either toxic elitism or microtransaction hell, both of which are extremely offputting. Plus, my reflexes and manually dexterity these days are both completely rubbish, which I'm sure would not help.

It'll be a fun ride either way.

What score are you hoping/expecting you'll be giving to Conquest when this is over?

Honestly, of all the healing personals, the one I've probably got the most use out of is Dorothea's. This is not so much an endorsement of her personal as a condemnation of the other ones. I've got some decent use out of it in the mock battle of chapter 1, though, since healing is limited at that point. It can also be nice to have for mitigating environmental damage, especially in Ailel. If I do her and Ingrid's paralogue when I only have Ingrid recruited then that's what I normally end up using her for. It's not much, but it's something. As for Renewal, it's biggest problem is that it's a class skill for probably the single class in the game that wants it the least. If you put it on something like a Fortress Knight, then it's tolerably OK. Not great, but OK. Except that it's a strategy that's only available in NG+ or with a lot of grinding, and in either case you have other options that are both stronger and more fun and interesting. (Build idea: Fortress Knight Linhardt with Catnap, Renewal, Battalion Renewal, Axe of Ukonvasara, Ochain Shield. This is a terrible idea and part of me wants to try it.)

So, here's a question. For her personal, does the extra crit chance get added based on the enemy's HP at the start of the combat or their HP at the time of the specific hit? That is, if they are at 60% HP, Petra hits them to knock them down to 45% HP, and then has a follow-up attack, does that follow-up have the increased chance to crit (and thefore most probably get the kill), or does it still have the same original chance to crit (and therefore a higher chance of not killing)? My assumption would be that she would get the extra crit for the follow-up, but it's been long enough since I last used her that I can't actually remember for sure. What you're saying seems to be implying that she doesn't get the increased crit in that case, though, because otherwise it's a relevant ability for a much wider enemy health window. Do you know for sure either way?

Well, I never save scum for that sort of thing. Obviously it's not an option in ironman runs, but even if I'm resetting whenever someone dies, that sort of save scumming just isn't fun for me (for compariosn, I also don't savescum exam results in Three Houses, which I know a lot of people do). Nothing against you or anyone else who does save scum, but it isn't for me. Obviously, there are a lot of factors that are going to influence how limiting a factor ore is going to be. How fast you play, how lucky you are with random My Castle drops, what type of resource you have natively, how well you manage to optimise what resources you have, etc. But I can say for certain that in both of my plays through Fates (one Birthright, one Conquest), my forging has been limited by my access to ore far more than it's been limited by money.

I've never seen or read anything of Naruto so I can't comment on any of the specifics of that franchise. However, if Wikipedia is to be be believed, Naruto has had 72 volumes of manga, 26 novels, 720 episodes of anime across two series, and 11 full length movies. I have no clue what proportion of that total featured the characters you're talking about, but they have had no shortage of time to cover characters and themes in basically as much depth as they want. On the other hand, Shadows of Valentia is a single video game, it gives more of its time and effort to gameplay than to storytelling, it is limited by trying to follow the plot of Gaiden, and Alm vs Berkut isn't even the main focus of the story (for me, the two biggest aspects of the story are the defeat of Duma to transition into a new age, and the love story between Alm and Celica; your mileage may vary). I don't know how much dialogue Berkut gets across the whole game. Maybe a few hundred words, at a guess? Of course he's going to be a fairly shallow character. How could he have been anything but? Expecting nuanced storytelling under these circumstances seems futile at best. Sure the Alm versus Berkut storyline isn't perfect and could have been done better, but I don't see this sort of apples-to-oranges comparison as a useful way to shine a light on its flaws.

I'm sceptical of this. I mean, we are talking Normal mode here so I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand. Normal mode is easy enough that there's a lot of stuff that can work there that really shouldn't. But that said, I think it's worth noting that Nosferatu in Three Houses is considerably worse than it was in Shadows of Valentia. The three major downgrades are finite uses, decreased healing and increased weight. The increased weight mean you're going to double a lot less and be doubled a lot more; you take more damage and heal less of it. Thenon top of that, you're only healing for half the damage you deal, which is further reducing your healing. While the situation in SoV might be "take 10 damage, then hit for 10 damage and I'm healed back to full", given identical stats, the TH version would look more like "take 10 damage, hit for 10 damage so I'm healed back for 5 point, then take another 10 damage because I'm being doubled". Obviously, the numbers wouldn't be exactly that because there are other factors involved, but it's illustrative. And then even if you do somehow manage to make the build work anyway, you have limited uses per map -- only 12 uses before you hit level 20 -- after which you've nothing left. Maybe it's viable in Normal Mode, but I am doubtful. This is assuming that she has a brave weapon, which is not guaranteed since they are a finite resource. And even if she does have one, I'd much rather be able to kill by doubling with a wo dao than quadding with a brave sword. Wootz steel isn't super rare, but it's rare enough that preserving durability on brave weapons is a relevant consideration. There are also situations where I would want to kill something on player phases but then also be prepared for enemy phase. And given that brave weapons are generally pretty bad on enemy phase due to their weight, anything that lets me get the kill without having to use the brave weapon is a plus.