Othin

Kunaibreaker is a fantastic skill and works great on Bow Knights. But yes, Rally Skill really should go. They knew not to bother with a Skill Seal; why couldn't they realize that it'd be best to drop Rally Skill?

How does he have 317 Mt and 289 Crit? Even with a +63 Ganglari, I don't see where those would come from unless they were edited separately.

Chapter 9 is where Azura joins you for real in the Nohr story; there's no chance to set up any aspect of her beforehand and also absolutely no reason to.

Defender is a bit subtle, but it stands out a lot more now that the total stat boosts it offers are likely to be almost as large as the ones you were getting from Pair Up already rather than in Awakening where the Pair Up boosts were enormous and completely dwarfed the Defender boosts.

This isn't about Phoenix Mode so much as Casual Mode, but I do wish revives were more of a thing. Maybe like five of them available throughout the main story, and not just at the end, either. I'd enjoy tough maps a lot more if the motivation to keep all my characters alive came from a significant cost of ingame resources to bringing them back, so that I wouldn't feel compelled to reset but it would still be a serious concern worth taking considerable effort to avoid. I imagine I'd still reset on most character deaths in that case to save the revives for where I'd really need them, but they'd be an option for when things go wrong all the way at the end of a long and unpleasant chapter, turning it into a cost in the form of a valuable ingame resource rather than in the form of requiring you to sink a ton of real-life time doing the same thing all over again.

Diamond Strike is pretty neat; a lot of enemies will use it and it makes them really hard to hurt on the enemy phase. But it's mostly interesting when it's on enemies that would otherwise be taking a fair bit of damage. I haven't had much experience with Mirror Strike yet; it also seems pretty cool but like Diamond Strike I could see it working better on a class that can make better use of it. Much like how the fact that bows seem to be getting more powerful but less accurate makes Raven Strike more significant.

Rallybots seem fine to me; it's a lot more interesting having complex non-combat tactics. Not everyone has to be a fighter.

Better solution: make skirmishes available on Nohr Casual, just not Nohr Classic. There should really already be a way to get skirmishes on completed Nohr files for postgame purposes, anyway.

No, they most certainly are not. You do realize that Feena and Sylvia are not armored knights, right? Every previous FE game so far has offered in-battle animations where the characters who actually bother to wear armor don't make an exception for their groin. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for out of Fates. If the ridiculous outfits were an option like Phoenix Mode rather than an automatic part of battle animations and non-battle conversations, I think there would be a lot fewer complaints. But while the devs had the decency to make Phoenix Mode only relevant if you actually want it, that's not the case for the outfits.

Given the enormous Dragon Vein Point requirements for high-level statues, that's definitely never going to happen. They'd have to redesign the whole system. Gameplay changes are not going to happen. Not until the next FE game.

It is not possible to kill a map full of enemies outnumbering you three to one in one turn.

Crit seems to just have been changed from Skl/2 to (Skl/2)-2 now.

As with the past few games, many bosses don't even have a Move stat at all, if they're designed to be stationary. Bosses that are capable of moving will behave pretty much like any other mobile enemy.

I don't understand it. Although Fates is more technically demanding than ever, it's hard for me to imagine what someone could find so challenging that Normal Casual isn't enough to keep things manageable, especially with the option of grinding. But if there really are people finding the game more accessible as a result, I can't exactly complain.

If you use weak weapons unnecessarily, you're adding on extra challenge for every enemy. Of course, for major bosses, it's easy to just stick to powerful personal weapons that have no penalties. Meanwhile I feel the need to remark that I've been using a Parasol a bit recently and it's turned out to be a perfectly good weapon. Yes, even though it's a sword with 1 Mt and all the downsides that come along with standard 1-2 range weapons. I should probably replace it with a Kodachi since I'm noticing now that those are strictly better, but in the meantime even its weaker variant has been working just fine. 1-2 range is just irreplaceable, especially when it means setting up a powerful Dual Attack.

I don't see the problem with Dark Blood. It's definitely breathing, just not moving that much. Lack of weapon icons has to be intentional, as hard as it is to imagine why.

Clipping's been around since Awakening; I don't think they have an easy fix. Lack of weapon icons seems purposeful, as annoying and perplexing as it is, and it'd probably be really jarring and confusing for the weapons to all suddenly get new icons as part of an update. The others sound like subtler things the devs might've just missed; I haven't noticed them at all. So if they find that those animations aren't behaving as they're supposed to, it's possible they'll do something.

To my recollection, I've never even seen it activate.

Hmm, okay.

They don't.

So what does Ice Blood actually do because it's definitely not what the site says.

This seems to vary. I think earlier enemies often will but later ones won't. The AI makes some effort at setting up Dual Attacks: if an enemy can't reach a character but can get close enough to grant a Dual Attack to another enemy that's going to attack them, they will. This happens even if the character they're attacking is in Guard Stance, making the Dual Attack useless. They also seem to just stick to the basics rather than optimizing overall Dual Attacks from a group of enemies attacking several times in one turn.

I don't know why you'd want Leon to lose access to his personal tome. As a random bonus, like all character-named weapons.

I think so, but I'm not certain. Defense tanking is more reliable, anyway, especially in Guard Stance. I haven't found myself really planning to keep fighting non-boss enemies for several rounds; it's just something that's happened a couple times when I've been able to hold them off but not kill them for some reason.

Do Fates enemies even ever have Killer weapons? I don't remember any. Enemies with Silver can be scary at first, but they just keep using it so if they survive a couple fights they quickly turn pathetic. I've seen it happen a few times and it's always pretty funny.