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.

I have to say I agree. It would be undeniably awesome to just have all three xD It's a sad reality we live in! Maybe if the next FE has a really popular mage character, or even a mage main character (gasp), we'll have a chance at something similar. I haven't played Engage yet (probably won't get to it for a long time if I'm being honest) but based on what you said, they don't really fit a role that isn't taken up by at least one other fighter (or even more than one, haha). If there needs to be an Engage rep in the next SSB, I would instead hope for one of the supporting characters. Of which I know nothing about, lol.

Thank you for the guidance @ARMADS!!!. I will go back to this when I finally get to this pair of games, which will take awhile, haha. Given what you said, I'll probably play FE7 -> FE6 since you seem to have thought a lot about the character progressions and everything. Story does come first for me in these games.

The trio idea is a cool one that has been passed around for a while as well, but I don't think it was ever feasible to expect. The only time we got a ">1 in 1" DLC fighter is Pyra/Mythra, and they share many animations and similar moves. To have three fundamentally different fighters in one--all with utterly unique animations and movesets--would take, well, three times as long as the average fighter. They never would have done that for a DLC fighter that is (a) meant to release on a schedule and (b) the same price as the rest of the DLC. Maaaaybe if it was a base game fighter they would have considered it, but otherwise, it was never gonna happen. I did always like the Micaiah idea to fill the pure mage niche, but that ship unfortunately sailed around 15 years ago.

Beyond vague references I'd rather stay away from Three Hopes talk as I haven't finished. I'm also wondering if Three Hopes is even "canon" or "canon-adjacent". Like, if the premise changed in this way, things would've definitely gone this way in Three Houses? Is it the same writers who worked on both? They do? Because I've just been complaining about the fact that they don't. The only actual goal they seem to have is Rhea gone. Beyond that, what is their vision for the continent? To spread Shamballan culture across the world? To turn everyone into a mole person? To enslave all the regular people and make a caste system? Ton do...something with Arval and Zaharas? To go back underground and perfect dubstep? Aside from the most generic motivation and goal of "power for the sake of power" they really don't have clear motivations and goals as I see it. All they ever say is they want to cleanse the world or something to that effect, but what taint they see on the world beyond Rhea, and probably the other Nabateans is a big shrug. At most we can deduce they want what they were doing in the century or so Nemesis was in control, as that was the height of their victory over Sothis, presumably a bigger threat to them than Rhea. But all they did in that time was support feudalism. The exact same thing everyone else in the series does (yes, yes, Edelgard, I see you there, go sit in the corner with Ashnard). Obviously I'm not saying they have deep goals. You've answered your own question in this tangent. It is beyond odd to imply that Edelgard and Ashnard are similar in either goals or motivation. [PoR and Awakening spoilers below]

With the information we have (i.e., without very much behind-the-scenes info on the game's writing process) I am going to elect to give the the writers the benefit of the doubt in this particular instance. As for the game portraying the Agarthans as clearly evil when we see them, you are completely correct, of course. But I think it's completely within reason to wonder whether they were always like this, or devolved (ironic given they call everyone else beasts) after centuries of being underground and resorting to self-mutilating and implanting themselves with the body parts of gods and [edit: not actually sure about that part] miscellaneous tech.... That could make any group go absolutely insane, whether they started like that or not. You're also right that the writers could have given more information on their background if they really wanted the player to feel bad for them. But I don't think the game ever wants to, needs to, or should do that. If you'll forgive the possibly lame example, think of the Joker from Batman. Unquestionably evil when the audience sees him. But it's often left up in the air whether he was always like this (a sort of pure incarnation of chaos) or if something led up to it. This being an open question doesn't ever make it so the Joker is potentially sympathetic, nor is it meant to. I think the Agarthans are somewhat similar. Not in their specific characterization--because obviously the Agarthans have clear motivations and goals, while the Joker just spreads chaos indiscriminately--but rather, they are a source of intrigue for the player. You may think I'm being too charitable to the writers, but as long as this is not contradicted, I believe it to be a fair interpretation. Not definitive by any means, but fair. Now, purely as an antagonistic force, I do find them somewhat weak as a result of them not having enough screen time (although not quite as strongly as many others around here, evidently), but that's a slightly different topic. That is certainly another valid interpretation of the Rhea character. I find myself going back and forth between this interpretation and the one I previously mentioned, and that's why I enjoy the ambiguous presentation of this lore. Even if one interpretation puts Rhea's character arc in a completely different light than the other, I find it fascinating all the same. If I somehow implied that I thought they were justified at any point, I should apologize. No matter which interpretation is correct, how the Agarthans chose to retaliate is disgusting. I only suggested that they might have not attacked unprovoked. But even if that's true, the Agarthans obviously went too far afterwards.

Hi!! Nice profile picture!

I might agree about the first point, but in any case it's pretty close I think. The "what if without why" does really resonate with me, haha.

Yeah, there is the fact that they don't really talk about the possibility of peace. Maybe that's the thing (or at least one thing) the scene is missing for me. The scene probably should have opened with that. I also think it would have devolved into something similar all the same (I don't think it was platitudes). But then it would have had more leading up to it, and that would probably make it a better scene. There is actually some dialogue (combat dialogue and some other dialogue) between the two of them in Three Hopes (of which I've only completed Scarlet Blaze) that actually adds something to this effect.

Ah, I think I understand now. Thank you for clarifying.