FlamesOfRagnell

That sounds much, much more fun than what we ended up with, to be honest.

Yeah, I've been thinking this. I believe there should be far less supports if it means the dialogue can change significantly based on character deaths. I might say something similar for main story dialogue, but what would that nesessitate? A far smaller cast? Honestly, I just want the dialogue in general to be more affected by character deaths. It's the reason I don't play Classic, because otherwise, to me, there's currently no reason not to just save scum or (depending on game) turn wheel to just keep everyone.

I love Ike's ending because it seems like he just had enough of the bullshit going on constantly in Tellius, he just said "fuck this shit I'm out." After all, he accomplished what he set out to do on a personal level. His business with the Black Knight is finished and his friends are safe from the ultimate threat. It's up to interpretation whether he goes on to fight for the little guy against bandits and whatnot, or just lives quietly from then on. As for the Elincia thing, I thought that relationship would have made sense but being with Soren also makes sense, if you believe the implications (I do).

I also wish they kept away from any sort of time travel in the story. So many problems came of it. The situation you mentioned is probably the least offensive case, though, to be honest. First of all, Divine Pulse adds nothing to the story. If it was removed, nothing about the course of events would really change. So that begs the question, why even bother writing it in? Secondly, it introduced new problems. There's this one with Jeralt, although I think you could rationalize it pretty easily as "No matter how many times you Divine Pulse, Thales will always be able to stop you." There's also the case in Azure Moon, where It made an already less-than-good scene fairly ridiculous. There are other problems that extend even to the game's past events:

Honestly, I think for the time being the best thing to do might be to add on to the game after a while. The next Nintendo console could have us see a renewed sort of Ultimate, like what's happening with Mario Kart 8. This is assuming the next console is backwards compatible, though; I wouldn't want to pay for "Ultimate Deluxe". Although I may be forced to... The reason I'd like this is because Ultimate's meta is still so untapped what with all the characters and matchups. It could still take years for the game to become fully "figured out". Anything that's added on wouldn't have to be new characters (although I'd love that). It could also just be new stages, music, single player content, whatever.

Welcome! I know I'd definitely like to see any artwork or anything you've made.

As an overall game experience, I think PoR beats out RD. RD takes far more risks, so funnily enough I respect it more than PoR, but I believe RD fails in a lot of those risks, so it just turns out less enjoyable than PoR. I really love changing between so many different armies in concept, but the units are so woefully imbalanced that the early to mid game is a frustrating slog and the late game is far too easy with your practically untouchable royal units. The unending reinforcements were just the icing on this cake of ridiculousness. As far as story goes I actually like RD quite a bit more than PoR. I never disliked the blood pact as much as everyone else (I was completely fine with it narratively other than the mechanics of it not being fully explained). It had far greater scope and pulled it off quite nicely. Micaiha's character getting upstaged by Yune was also upsetting, but her character arc was almost fully complete as far as I saw it, so I could have been worse. All that being said, I rank PoR only very slightly above RD.

Solid post. Frankly, I'm not sure it was necessary to go into so much detail and data analysis to support what I find to be a fairly obviously true hypothesis, generally speaking. But the work was impressive nonetheless, and it was a pretty enjoyable read. One thing I might push back on, though, is this: I'd say Claude's route is plenty different enough to justify not using it, based on the context alone. This story doesn't really lose anything of value by not using it. That's because the effectiveness of that cutscene mainly relies on the player's knowledge of Edelgard, her past, her motivations, and her relationship to Byleth, all of which are either not at all explored in this route or are extremely barebones. So if you're the developer, I see no reason why you wouldn't naturally come to the conclusion that this cutscene would be better off removed in this route. It's not even as if the player would particularly expect to see a cutscene here, especially if it's their first time playing. And I'm pretty sure the devs have been on record saying they expected the vast majority of players to only play once (unfortunately I don't have a source for that). The only thing this cutscene does for this specific route is an unearned (and therefore underwhelming) attempt at shock value (i.e., the abrupt ending) because of the lack of context, and a source of confusion as to why Edelgard is suddenly speaking to Byleth as if they have some deep history. I'm honestly not sure why the devs didn't do the obvious thing and just remove the cutscene and avoid those inevitable problems. Could it possibly have been simple laziness? Or did they figure "Hey, the players will simply like the mere fact that another cutscene is in this route, regardless of its place in the narrative"...

I think it would be silly to remove one of the trademark features of (at least more recent) FE games. It's one of the cool aspects to play around with and see different outcomes for. Or, if you're the type to only play once, it's a nice way to personalize the player's experience even just a little more. However, if they wanted to improve the system, here's what I'd do: Reduce the number of potential pairings. Firstly, the vast majority of players won't even be interested in seeing them all anyway. Secondly, many pairings in FE games are... not great, for at least one of a few reasons. Obviously I don't work for IS, so I'm not sure why, but it could very well be because there are too many pairing options, so some are just shoehorned in. This often results in simply lame pairings without much chemistry (ex. Lysithea x Ignatz) or, worst of all, creepy weird shit (ex. Hanneman x Dorothea). If they were to remake, say, Awakening, with full voice acting and all, I feel like they could just cut like half of the romantic pairings without losing out on much of anything. But please let me keep Robin x Chrom lol. In any case, I think it would be a mistake to canonize pairings. Limiting the options would almost certainly solve any potential problems in my mind, while retaining the intent of the mechanic.

Plenty seem to dislike the 3H UI, but I quite like it. I won't say it's my favorite, but it's compact and gives you access to a lot of information at once (thanks to it being the first HD FE game). Despite the volume of information, I find it to be fairly organized. If the game was playable on PC with mouse controls, it would be heavenly.

If there's one thing I can grant Metodey, it's that the voice actor had a lot of fun! Respect!

I know the latter three, and they are "loveable to hate" in completely different ways, haha. Except, I do think Metodey is simply lame. He's almost on the same level as Pallardó to me; just a "bleh" unlikeable dude they throw in when they want a semi-recognizable face among the hordes of nameless thieves or other scum. Walhart, on the other hand, is pretty badass I'd say, doesn't take shit from anyone, and doesn't squirm when put on the ropes a bit. The Death Knight is as hilarious as he is intimidating, what with his sadism and masochism in equal measure, and his crazed mutterings that he makes (basically to himself) as he fights do instill some nervousness in me...

I might be kind of checking out of the Ashnard discussion but I would like to remind that Edelgard would like to completely get rid of Crests for this reason. She expresses this throughout the story, but in the Edelgard/Hanneman ending, for example: (Ignoring the weird romantic implications that follow...) Also, in multiple Lysithea endings, her Crests (that is, both of them; not just the extra one) are successfully removed. The prime example being Lysithea/Linhardt, which can obviously occur in CF.

Being centered around the rings makes sense, but it does indeed seem odd to not have an actual dragon form of any kind...even if it was just during basic attacks or something.