lenticular

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.

The biggest loss is ore, and to a lesser extent food. If you play fast (I'm thinking taking about a week to ten days here, which is pretty quick, but not speedrun-quick or monomaniacal-obsession-quick) and don't do any online stuff, then you will be short of ore and you will be limited on how many forges you can do. The mine and the food gathering spot are restricted to once every four maps or once every real world day, which doesn't give you many harvests over the course of a quick play. And yeah, there's random drops from My Castle conversations, and there's the arena, but those are only going to take you so far. You also aren't going to have access to the Chef's Hat, Smithy Shield or Arena Shield, which is a further impediment. Of course, you absolutely can play and complete the game without any of this stuff. You can beat the game without even building the smithy or the mess hall. And if it was just the mess hall, then I wouldn't think of it as that big a loss. But forging? Being limited on forging sucks. Both because it's been a core game mechanic in the series since Path of Radiance and because of how important forged weapons are in a game where most of the supposedly high-end weapons come with substantial drawbacks. It's not absolutely vital, but I'd definitely say that it is meaningful.

It continues to astound me that you aren't giving negative a billion points to a game that ties actual important game mechanics to the passage of real world time. Well, different people have different priorities and different play-styles, I guess. This, on the other hand, makes me happier than it has any right to. This spot is thoroughly deserved. Anyway, I am looking forward to Conquest. I know you like it way more than I do, and I will probably gripe about several of the things that I don't like, but it's always a joy to see someone write about something they are passionate about.

Oh gods. This chapter. First, the whole thing with no saving and no access to merchants between levels? I don't like it. I sort of see what they were going for, but I don't like it. That said, the level itself. When I played it, I ended up not one-turning it. I was undermanned at that point and wanted to take it carefully. And I have to say that this is probably the worst example in the game of woefully inadequate Dragon Vein descriptions. If the Internet is to be believed, the exact text they show is "Blight area to feed Garon HP each turn". Which tells me almost nothing about what it's going to do. Even after they're triggered, it's still not obvious exactly what the blight does, in terms of how much it heals Garon for. Long story short, this ended up being simultaneously one of the most fun maps in the game for me but also an exercise in pure frustration. Fun because I had to come up with interesting strategies and tactics to survive some of the crap that the game was throwing at me, but frustrating because none of the difficulty felt fair or earned, but entirely the result of deficient UI. It was the only point in the run that my ironman felt in danger, and if I had got a game over, I probably would have put the game down forever and never picked it up again. I was that frustrated with it, and also had no desire to replay chapter 27 just to get back and try again. Happily, I did manage to beat the chapter in the end, but if there is one chapter in the game that absolutely needs to have all its mechanics and gimmicks clearly explained to the player, it's the chapter that you aren't allowed to save before.

How many people are actually going to remember his stats from 14 chapters previously, though? I know I didn't. I remembered that the last time I saw him he had very high stats compared to where I was at the time but certainly not the absolute values. And besides, if the idea is to have him be deliberately ineffective, why are his stats not lowered on hard? If it's an important part of storytelling, why is it not present on one difficulty level? And the middle difficulty level at that. I'd understand if he had lower stats on normal and hard but then very high stats on lunatic if they wanted to prioritise difficulty on lunatic, but having it be only hard where his stats aren't lowered is really weird.

I remember there's a line somewhere in the run up to this chapter where someone (probably Elise?) talks about how Xander is super strong and a step above everyone we've fought up to that point, and that Garron might be even stronger still. And then it gives us this, the easiest chapter since the initial two tutorial levels. Terrible difficulty curve, terrible game/story integration, and terrible setting expectation for the final boss. I don't know what they were thinking with this one.

If Linhardt has nothing better to do then he doesn't need healing. If he needs healing, then he has something better to do.

What's more, paralogues are themselves pretty big incentives to be doing a lot of recruitment in the first place. If I want to get Thyrsus, I have to recruit Lorenz even if I have no intention of using him. If I want to do Mercedes' paralogue then I have to recruit Caspar even if I have no intention of using him. And so on. I'm generally of the opinion that doing fewer recruitments is the most fun way to play Three Houses, partly for pacing reasons and partly because having more named enemies in part two is more interesting, so I don't think it's good for the game to be incentivising the player to recruit people they aren't ever going to use. I think that it would have been better if there had been a lot more two-person paralogues in part one, but fewer of them in part two. This would more evenly spread the paralogue load, remove some of the incentive for benchwarmer recruitment, and also give the player more chance to get to know students from outside their house. More controversially, I'm also owndering if it would have been better to more tightly lock heroes' relics to their associated crests. If Thyrsus were garbage on anyone without the crest of Gloucester then that would completely remove the incentive to recruit Lorenz just to do his paralogue.

Entrap is such a pain. Anything long range and with a high chance to be fatal is a pain. Or rather, they have to be used exceedingly sparingly otherwise they become a pain. They necessitate very slow and cautious play, and while that can be fun to play around once, if it gets too common then it can really drag the game to a halt. My prediction: it will not actually be interesting. Just having a single regular locked door between the player's starting location and the boss is such a weird decision and I do not understand it.

Sniper and Dancer are the two classes I've run him as, and that definitely colours my perception of his personal. (Well, technically I've also tried him as a Paladin, which does make his personal a bit better, but only up until the point where I dropped him for being terrible at everything else. That build did not work well for him.) I know that he's supposed to be good on a wyvern, but due to a combination of lack of flying batallions and my own personal preference for class diversity, I've always chosen to go with other people who are better at it than him. Yeah, it would still be bad but a lot less bad. They could even make it "gain 10% hp every turn and an extra 20% hp if you took no action other than wait", and that would probably still be on the weak side.

Goody Basket is terrible, but I still like it more than Catnap. It definitely isn't something that I'd ever rely on, but it's at least possible for it to be vaguely useful occasionally. Even if it only triggers once per game, that's still more use than I'm ever getting from Catnap. Huh. For some reason I thought that ending turn did trigger "on wait" type skills. Maybe because I've been playing Fates recently. Or maybe because I usually have everyone manually stand in place rather than doing end turn since that means I'm less likely to forget about someone I was supposed to move. Not that it makes a great deal of difference to my overall assessment, but it is still good to know. I definitely consider Cyril a contender for "most annoying personal skill" and "worst designed personal skill", but not for the worst in terms of power level. For a long while, I've wished that Cyril's personal gave a bonus to his class growths. Give him normal or even slightly below average looking growths, but then double the growths he gets from his class. So, put him in swordmaster and it would give him +40 to his speed growth (compared to +20 for other swordmasters). Put him in Fortress Knight and he'd get +30 to his defence growth. And so on. It would take some fairly careful balancing, but I think something along those general lines would have more potential to be interesting than what we got. Technically, there are multi-use chest keys, in the form of master keys which have 3 charges and are available for 200 renown form the pagan altar. Though, given that's DLC only and that renown is not as easy to come by as gold, that doesn't change the assessment much except for people who have the DLC and are playing on NG+. I think master keys might also drop occasionally from the amiibo gazebo, but I'm not certain of that, and even if I'm right then it's even less relevant than the pagan altar. I think that part of the region why I don't like Ashe's personal is that I like using fliers for chests, and I don't like putting Ashe on a wyvern. I would probably get more use out of it if I did. As is, I would his below Petra's or Dorothea's but above the others you mentioned. Not the absolute worst, but definitely down there.

If that was the intention, then I almost wish they'd done it in a game with only one route. Having different routes really dilutes the emotional impact of having your main lord turn on you.

In terms of off-beat and off-meta builds that are fun or interesting but not the best, I like Wyvern Lord Annette (using Bolt Axe/Crusher/Lightning Axe), spell-caster Ingrid (usually either Dark Knight or Dark Flier), and Sniper Mercedes (slow to get going but picks up once you get a Magic Bow and becomes unstoppable when you add Hunter's Volley as well). I don't tend to think this is necessary given how readily available keys are in Three Houses, but it certainly doesn't hurt. And happily enough, Assassin is a strong enough class that you can take it just for its combat ability and then decide for yourself whether you find locktouch worthwhile.

A few quick comments: The way you're presenting stats is weird and I'm genuinely unsure what they're even saying. Are they supposed to be caps and growths? What are the parenthetical numbers? Where are the bases? I'm so confused by them. It would be nice to see what skill levels you are imagining the characters would learn arts, spells, etc. A lot of the characters appear to be overtuned or otherwise not following the rules and conventions for Three Houses characters. Innately learning abilities like Renewal or Aegis or having spell lists with more than five spells immediately says "this is not a Three Houses character". Having skills from Awakening that rely on pair up doesn't really make sense in the context of Three Houses, considering the mechanic doesn't exist. While adjutants are vaguely similar, I don't think the skills still make sense.

Not kidding. I consider it one of the worst, and I've seen other people express the same opinion. The basic problem is that it's entirely replicated by keys, keys are infinitely buyable from the merchant, and Three Houses is not a game where money is at all hard to come by. It can sometimes be convenient for moments of "I'm too lazy to buy keys" or "oops, I forgot to buy keys" but I have never had a single instance where being able to afford keys was an issue. It's a money-saver in a game where money isn't an issue. For me, it's at its best at times when you want to be able to open a chest but can't afford the inventory slot for a key. That's very niche, though, and is something you can also do with convoy access instead if you absolutely need it.