Jotari

So according to the timeline, Rudolf has a brand, and it's the whole reason he got to be emperor as he was a distant relative (which sounds a little too similar to Ashnard imo) Which seems to throw the entire story on its head. For one thing, it justifies his use of Falchion and the belief that he can kill Mila. But on the other side, which seems a lot more pertanant, it makes absolutely no sense. Alm and Celica's brands are talked about as if they were unique, ie, not given to every generation. Rudolf worries for his son because his son is born with the brand and is likely the hero to save Valentia. Rudolf has just as much potential in that regard. Why wasn't his father afraid of the Duma faithful killing him? Jedah's almost a hundred and fifty years old, even if Halcyon was in charge when Rudolf was born, he surely had the means to arrange one baby assassination. And why is Duma supporting the brand bearers getting the throne if the brand bearers are specifically the ones destined to kill him? It seems like they really wanted to throw Genealogy lore into the story, but didn't really consider how it actually works with the story. And also, if Rudolf had the brand, you reckon he would have mentioned it when giving Alm to Mycen. "Like me, the child also has the brand. The Duma faithful have gotten more powerful since I was a lad, and Duma himself has grown more wild, I fear he will not be raised with the same praise as I was." Something along those lines would have solved all of it. The fact that the game makes absolutely no reference to Rudolf having a brand makes me suspect the credibility of the entire timeline. Which is a shame, as it has Macedonian Vikings invading Valentia, which is awesome.

What I find interesting is that White Dragons and Fafnirs are listed twice as Mila and Duma's servants. I assume that those are enemies you fight in the Amiibo dungeon? It brings up an interesting suggestion that Mila and Duma cam to Archanea with more dragons than just the two of them. The question is, however, if White Dragons are Mila's servants, why do they appear in Duma's Temple? I'm currently weaving a head canon that suggests Duma kidnapped Mila's dragon servants (who went mad long ago) and brought them to Rigel when Rudolf stormed the temple. Many of them were also killed in the process and they became the Necro Dragons you fight in the bog a few chapters later. I used to theorize that White Dragons were actually weaker Divine Dragons, this could still be true as the description says they don't attack with breath, rather than they can't.

It helps that Fates over all has a much stricter exp curve than in other games. If you're only a few levels higher than the enemy and you kill them, you get basically no exp. This discourages low manning as the main advantage of it is leveling up one or two really powerful units by giving them all the exp. But if piling all the exp on one or two units still doesn't level them up, then you might as well use more than one or two units to maximize your output.

In my defense, it wasn't a bad assumption! We had an ancient advanced civilization of dragons, and an ancient ruins of an advanced civilization. It's only occum's razor to assume it's the same ancient advance civilization. Naga even went there to die. Which before, seemed like it was because it's her natural resting place, but now it seems more like she went to the place that symbolized her greatest failure. Which is a bit more poignant. Exactly. It could be really cool. One big battle, in one location with the time being measured in hours (for the sake of gameplay and story integration, fatigue is a must). It'd be like the way Blazing Blade focused on an entirely different, smaller conflict, only instead of the conflict being smaller, it's just the scope that's really small (but at the same time, kind of really large as an entire city is being wiped out, innocents and all). New to me, but apperantly it's been around since the Amiibo dungones. Someone started translating the artbook which reinterated the info recently, however. https://serenesforest.net/fire-emblem-echoes-shadows-valentia/articles/valentian-revelations/

It could be a really unique setting for a game. Imagine it, a full game set entirely within this one massive city. Instead of a world map, you have a city map with various different sectors and districts that you battle through as you resist Duma's invading forces of dragons, while simultaneously trying to break through into Forneus' workshop to discover what the hell he's doing (and in case you think one local would lack diversity, there could easily be battles in the port, parks and surrounding desert. Hell if Thabes is really as awesome with magic as they seem to be, you could even have battles on floating islands and stuff above the city).

Some how I've completely missed all this Accordion stuff, alongside the Book of Revelations. Researching now. What I find interesting (admittedly a little disappointing) is that Forneus was a human. I, and a few others, used to assume he was a dragon, as Thabes was seen as 'the' ancient advanced civilization, so it was only natural to think it was the civilization of the ancient advanced dragons. But it was a city of humans destroyed by Duma. This also brings up another important point in that Gotoh only reintroduced magic to humans when he established Khaden, not long before the first game. So there's absolutely nothing stopping them making a game set in the era of the Earth Dragon war (that's something I actually argued intensely with someone before, can't remember who or where).

I knew it! Even when the game's text directly proves me wrong, I'm still right!

I wouldn't be pointing fingers. To me, at any rate, you're coming across as the most negative one here.

Yeah, that does make sense. As I said earlier, I don't actually have a problem with Celica's actions and motivations throughout the section. It's just that Jedah is written so badly, he drags her down just by proximity. You could keep most or all of her dialogue the same and just change some of his and it would improve things phenomenally (though the gameplay fights will always be a problem). Just one example, Celica rightly points out that Rigel were the ones that imprisoned Milda in the first place, have Jedah blame that all on Rudolf and claim he never wanted any harm done to the gods. In fact, have him claim that he never wanted Rigel to go to war in the first place, and that it was all the ambitions of Rudolf. That way he can at least try to absolve himself of wrong doing in Celica's eyes and paint a better picture of himself (and make Celica empathize with him in a way, as she sees herself in the same position regarding Alm).

Well you could add an infertile female. Now there's an interesting gimmick!

Thracia probably has the best unit balance in the series. There are some units with prf weapons that make them more valuable, and if you have a staff your inherently better, but on the whole, every last unit is worth deploying and can hold their own with a unique niche of some sort.

The difference between Jedah and an actual cult leader, is that Jedah offers absolutely nothing to gain trust. Cullts pray on the weak and insecure by giving them a place to be accepted and valued. Jedah never does anything even vaguely nice. He just offers Celica a particular form of suicide and she's all for it. I don't mind Jedah being evil and gradually showing his true colours, but he needs to do something before then to convince Celica he's not lying his ass off (which again, he totally is). The first scene is pretty decent, he approaches her with a rationale suggestion, and Celica appropriately mistrusts him. It's just that from there, he never tries any other tactic, instead, getting more and more overt in his evil, yet Celica becomes more and more convinced that he shares her motives and will keep his end of the bargain (which he doesn't).

It is kind of contrived and makes Ethlyn a really bad mother, but it still would work better than having her kidnapped when Leinster fell. We get to see it happening in Chapter 5, which is much more powerful than getting some opening text at the start of a chapter saying BTW, Leif's sister got kidnapped. If it were any other game, they could probably do a cut away scene and show us it happening at a different location, but that just isn't Holy War's mandated style. Things happen on the map, the scope is too big to leave a cut away to somewhere else. You stay ingrained in the world, where the action is happening at all times.

Which is precisely why I hope Jahn gets a big important model in the hypothetical future remake with boosted stats to cement him as the real final boss of the game (because let's face it, Idoun's heart just isn't in it).

Well regarding the final comment first (because that makes sense as a way to do things), he does also proclaim that he wants an age of fear and chaos, which he'd be more likely to get out of crazy Duma than sane Duma. He also says this in front of Celica, when she could still resist (and renege her consent, but whether that's necessary or not is just as frustratingly unclear as Jedah's motives). Jedah also doesn't provide anything for Celica to trust him. She meets him with healthy skepticism at first, demanding to see Mila before making any decision. Instead of complying with Celica and escorting her up Duma tower, he tries to kill her friends and forces her to fight for her life to make her way to him. There she discovers that, while he didn't lie about Mila's state, he certainly misled her about it. It barely even feels like he showed Mila off willingly considering Celica had to fight her way to him (and he probably could have just as easily used his crystal ball magic in their first encounter). Then he separates her from all her friends. The friends he's already proclaimed trespassers and shown a desire to kill (and sure enough, while Alm and Celica are doing their whole dance around a dragon, Saber and co are fighting for their lives). Que meeting with Alm and his whole line about wanting fear and chaos. So to sum up, Jedah is a leading figure of the nation at war with her homeland, attacks Celica at every opportunity he gets, blatantly says he wants to kill her friends, laughs manically at everything he says, withholds information until it's convenient, and doesn't even offer her a cup of tea when she's forced to barge into his house. I get Celica's motivations, she wants to save Mila and even failing that Duma, and is willing to sacrifice her self to do it. But Jedah is written is such a two dimensional way that lacks any nuance, it really brings her down. The writing around him is squarely to blame. He's does absolutely nothing to garner her trust and everything to make himself seem untrustworthy, and then, shocking twist, he proves to be completely untrustworthy. The biggest problem are the tower and swamp fights. They just don't make any sense narratively. Celica wants to be there, and Jedah wants her to be there. So he has no reason to try and kill her, and she has no reason to trust him after he actively does that. It's a case of them wanting to have their cake and eat it in regards to Gaiden. They want Jedah to have a bigger presence in the game by introducing him earlier, but they also want to keep all the maps the fights that were in the original game, without much care as to how to the two conflicting points don't gel together.

You know you can save mid map in Genealogy of the Holy War, right? A lot of people seem to miss that fact (probably because the option outright disappears if you move a unit, when it should probably go grey and unselectable). You're not expected to sit down and put two hours into each map, you can stop half way through and come back later and even reset to that point if someone dies. That's why each chapter is divided into several distinct parts. I see people complain about how long it takes to finish Holy War's chapters, but it seems like such a illogical complaint to me. The game only has 12 of em, it takes roughly the same amount of time to finish as every other title in the series. Yeah, there's some slog with dead turns moving units around, but minute for minute, the game's no more of an investment than any other.

Nolan and Boyd do illustrate what you were trying to say, even if they're not seen as a CordBord. Most classes in Radiant Dawn have 2-3 characters in it with one focusing on power and the other focusing on skill/spd, and maybe a third that balances between the two. It's actually impressive how diverse the cast is given how large it is. The big thing holding it back, however, is that most characters are either completely screwed or blessed by their level of availability (and the difficulty curve between the Mercs and Dawn Brigade being completely screwed, oh and peasant laguz sucking). Wait is the jetliner stationary or in flight? Because that makes a huge difference.

Well I obviously agree with you there. Over all, I'd like them to constantly try new things. Fire Emblem isn't an iterative franchise, like Pokemon. Each game is distinctly different to the last, even when they have the exact same mechanics, like Binding Blade and Blazing Blade. Fates did a good job of building off of Awakening, but I hope they don't grow too cautious due to the success of the DS games and just keep repackaging the same experience over an over. They should have the freedom to throw out things like reclassing and children characters for a game or two and try things like the biorhythm and fatigue again. Give us something completely different like Gaiden and Holy War every now and then. I don't really care what they do specifically, I'll buy the games regardless, so long as the series doesn't become static and I know exactly what kind of experiencing is waiting before I even buy the game. In particular, I hope they do away with the Awakening/Fates style of skill acquirement in the next game. It's fine, but it's definitely not something I want to permanently keep.

He ate his vegetables and exercised daily for a thousand years. Seriously though, he's not quite the size of Ylisse. He gets his own fancy big position on the map, we can only take that so far. After all, it would mean Chrom's an giant who can stomp across an island. No, we see that he's about the size of a castle in the Lucina flashback and when he reawakens near the end of the game. So still really, freaking big, but not big enough to have his own gravity field. Another unit of measurement you could use is the final map. At maximum width he's nine tiles wide, so we can assume that approximately nine horses could ride side by side on his back. So yeah, really freaking big, but not even Vatican sized as far as comparing him to countries go.

Hey now don't be all like that. There's no need to jump down my throat. I never claimed I don't want reclassing in the game. In fact I've actively said I like the idea. I was just merely pointing out that it's not something that can really be ignored. That's like saying you can ignore Silver Weapons in Fates because you don't like the attack loss. Like yeah, they might not be suited to your playstyle, but you're severely nerfing yourself if you ignore them completely because the game is designed with Silver Weapons being something you have access to in order to defeat the stronger enemies you encounter. If reclassing is in the game, then it's in the game. It's part of the intended experience by the developers for the product they've sold to you.

Jedah categorically lies about everything except that Mila and Duma are going mad. He promises A) To let Mila go free B) To let Alm go free C) To use Celica's soul to restore Duma to sanity. He A) reveals that he has neither the means nor the intention to release Mila. B) Immediately tries to use Celica herself to kill Alm, and C) Doesn't even want Duma to be sane in the first place! His line before the final battle essentially says that if Duma wants to be crazy, he gets to be crazy because he's the god.

It doesn't help that Naga seems inexplicably confused that Tiki is still lingering around as a spirit, even though she's presumably in the exact same state. I'm suggesting someone revived Naga in her physical dragon body to do battle with Grima in a colossal war of the gods.

I think Tiki's line makes it very clear it's a different Naga, but Grima's line is pretty confusing. If he believes he's killed Naga, then how can he be expecting her to play any more cards. I think there's only one real solution...Someone revived Naga and she fought the giant sky Grima one on one, devastating half the world (why else is Grima appearing before you in the Robin body with a spectral dragon head? He could just flatten them all with his giant dragon body). Grima managed to kill her body, thus killing her, but her soul persisted. It's basically fan fiction, but it's the only thing that really satisfies all the references.

Constance wondered to the water's edge and stared out at the sea. It was an unfamiliar sight to her. Raewald had a large coast, but it had always been distant from her. She briefly considered tossing her tome into the water, but an innate distaste for the destruction of knowledge prevented her. She held the book close to her chest and allowed the sound of the waves to bring peace. She did not discard the guilt that overwhelmed her, but she removed the stress and shame that would only hinder her. I will have no tome to defend myself, she thought. So I must make some armour. She raised her hand and started to weave a spell, a spell she had not cast since the days when she traveled with Oswald. Shadows formed around her, creating what appeared to be a suit of plate mail. She used some illusion to bolster the effect, it wouldn't provide much defense, but she hoped it would make her seem larger and more intimidating. She still the waves before her, and made a pool of calm water to study her reflection. The helmet she wore stared back at her, fierce and cold. I look nothing like a healer, but that can be a good thing. At the very least, I have steeled my heart.

Yes, she most definitely made the Valencian Falchion long before Jugdral as Duma and Mila split off from everyone else even before the Earth Dragon war.