Iridium

I don't see any issue with a little bit of Awakening continuity considering that Awakening had an entire arc centered around the future of Valentia. If anything, I feel like this might've been one of the best ways they could've handled it... especially considering the Fates approach.

as far as we've seen no none of the playable characters are in that class and nothing seems to promote into it but who knows

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aw yeah land of sorrow's finally up i have waited over a year for this moment

I believe that the amiibo characters have the same music that they had in Fates, with the exceptions of Roy and Corrin, who have "new" themes. Although only Roy's is actually new.

I'm genuinely surprised that we had the capability to do that and decided to use it on this game of all titles.

A postgame that involves Marth in some way would at least make that Marth pin make some degree of sense. I'm wary of letting Marth into a game where the protagonists are already overshadowed as hell by every other lord, though.

I want to say that that's probably not a particularly easy thing to do since I don't recall people even doing it for Pokémon or Smash, and both of those things seem like much more exciting things to datamine than a conservative remake of a game only six people including myself like.

This hurts my soul. I wish it was real.

Dread Fighters were sword-locked in Gaiden. Considering that even Cavaliers (who historically are almost always able to use two weapons) are still lance-locked in the remake, as they were in Gaiden, I feel like we can safely assume that Dread Fighters are probably not changing. As for Ike, he seems to use Ragnell when summoned. While it remains to be seen if there are additional implementations of the legacy characters, I feel like they probably would have been shown off by now if there was something more exciting.

I saw this post and started laughing for a solid thirty seconds. She's, like, the last person in the game who needs that skill.

I personally feel as though the use of Jagens adds a unique element of strategy to the game by creating something that you may need to rely on but will voluntarily not want to overuse. In harder games in particular, these characters can play a crucial role that smooths out difficulty by assisting players during the game's most difficult segments with the opportunity cost of an experience sacrifice. Jagens are fine. It is the Oifey who needs to end; characters like Seth and Titania are far better than they ought to be and remove the most important element of tactics behind the Jagen.

It does indeed seem like Nuibaba is a girl now. Their spell was Medusa, so there's a little bit of logic behind it, but... yeah, I can't really think of anything else to justify that. I doubt that Zeke is gone, considering that Gaiden's relevance to Archanea centers almost entirely around him. Even if he's not crucial as a unit, Tatiana is, and he's crucial to her. They're probably just trying to avoid showing him for whatever reason. Removing him would be like removing Minerva from Shadow Dragon. Yeah, you could make it work I guess, but you'd lose one of the most important subplots and characters in the process.

Gaiden's cast isn't substantially smaller than, for example, Sacred Stones's. This game also has three promotion tiers and at least five villagers; the villagers alone would be 15 portraits apiece (four classes with three portraits, mage, sage, and villager) for a total of 75. There are also around eight characters that would need three portraits and around a dozen that would need two. This ignores any potential new characters besides Faye, as well as boss portraits, generic portraits, and phantoms that would need to be done anyway... basically, it's not practical, especially for a game that probably only exists to be a low-budget stopgap anyway. I can almost certainly say that the sales increase that they would get from doing this is not enough to justify the price of commissioning about a hundred extra portraits from Hidari.

this is the face of someone who knows that they will be soloing a zombie apocalypse momentarily

This is a pretty good starting point. You can treat Gaiden as having eight playable class lines. Four of these have three tiers and promote at levels 7 and then 10, and the other four have two tiers and promote at level 12. Male Villagers are essentially a zeroth tier that can promote into any of the five classes on the above list, and we don't know what female Villagers can promote into. Soldier line: Soldier, Knight, and Baron. Emphasis on physical bulk. Archer line: Archer, Sniper, and Bow Knight. Emphasis on long-range attacks. Cavalier line: Cavalier, Paladin, and Gold Knight. Emphasis on movement range. Mercenary line: Mercenary, Myrmidon, and Dread Fighter. Emphasis on speed and resistance. Male Mage line: Mage and Sage. Emphasis on magical strength. Female Mage line: Mage and Priestess. Can wield a sword for self-defense. As a special exception, this class promotes at level 20. Pegasus Knight line: Pegasus Knight and Falcon Knight. Emphasis on monster slaying. Cleric line: Cleric and Saint. Emphasis on healing and support magic. Celica is a special Priestess who can promote into a Princess. Alm has a unique 'Fighter' class that combines the best parts of Soldier and Mercenary, and promotes to gain Bows and thus the best part of Archer too.

I feel like it's more likely she'd lose Soldier than Mercenary. Soldier and Pegasus are both Lance-based classes, and pretty much opposites, so it makes sense that they'd be the set that are exclusive. Mercenary and Pegasus Knights better resemble each other in function, though, so I could see that working out as an exchange too. I wish she would have lost Cavalier instead.

I'm well aware of the correct pronunciation, and try to use it when I'm paying attention. It sounds really dumb to me though, so I usually use the wrong-but-easier one whenever I'm not thinking too hard because it feels much more natural. (Another instance of this is the Pokémon Illumise, which is supposed to end in "mee-zay" but I don't care enough about it to justify the extra syllable from "mize.") This usually ends up resulting in a strange circumstance where I pronounce the forest proper correctly and pronounce the website as a pluralized serene. It's fairly rare that I need to talk about either in the real world, though, so this mostly only affects my thoughts.

Strictly speaking, Alm and Celica actually have decent growths and don't really gain much in terms of stats from promotion, so having them reach level 20 is still theoretically optimal. Alm in particular is one of the few units worth grinding since he's actually great. This might change, of course.

This is one of two plot elements that I'd really like to see altered a bit, the other being the end of Celica's route. I like Hark being involved with the promotion in some way, and the start of Chapter 4 is pretty much the perfect time in terms of gameplay, but it's still pretty dumb. There ought to at least be an event where Alm acknowledges the change.

That is presumably the point, yes. Gaiden has some ridiculously strong characters and I assume Fatigue was introduced so that you could not just skip the game by relying on them entirely. Gaiden's design philosophy lends itself well toward training everyone anyhow, with a greater emphasis on promotion gains and stat boosts compared to individual levels and 'leaked experience' being present as an actual mechanic. Weapons and spells, also, usually matter more than stats. After all of the complaints about Robin/Ryoma Emblem, it makes total sense that they would try to mitigate how terribly Alm and Catria can violate the game in an illegal manner. I'm interested in seeing how exactly they go about handling it, but I'm somewhat optimistic.

Trouble buying what? "Someone thought that two assassins being silent would be funny" sounds millions of times more likely to me than "this one single instance of dialogue was mysteriously deleted and overwritten with ellipses, at a point where it would almost make sense, without being changed in a later release that alters other dialogue." Now, I confess I don't know what the placeholder dialogue is in Fates, but I'm pretty sure it's not ".../.../.../...". Especially when the number of dialogue boxes was changed; with a mistake, you would expect either 0-1 or the same amount as in the original depending how exactly it was broken. If the game were otherwise respectful of the script, then sure, I'd believe it to be a mistake. But it's fairly well-documented that the Fates translation is pretty liberal (to be generous), so I don't see why anyone should be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt over a change like this.

It's not realistic for it to have been an accident, especially considering that it was in the European version too and just happens to be the one pairing where someone might find it to be a funny joke. That sounds like a rationale that was invented to alleviate Treehouse from guilt, more than anything else. It's about the same level of convenience as "accidentally" removing swimsuits. Fatigue is probably not a bad addition to the game. You eventually reach a point where you have at least one unit on both sides capable of doing a comprehensive solo of the remainder of the game, and this is obviously detrimental to the game's strategic elements. Fatigue might resolve this... although it might also not do anything at all, depending on how its handled. Or perhaps more specifically: whether or not Alm (who is easily the strongest unit in his army that isn't a cleric) can get fatigued.

I'm talking about the role served by the class, and not necessarily the class itself. In most games within the series, "Mercenary" represents a standard sword-fighting unit without any special traits, while "Myrmidon" represents a more specialized version aimed toward swift and skillful attacks. In Gaiden and in Tellius, the "Mercenary" role is taken up by the lord, and the "Myrmidon" role is generalized slightly and used as the basic non-special sword infantry unit in place of it. Gaiden is a little bit different from Tellius in that the "Mercenary" class technically still exists on its own, but its promotions definitely are more inspired by the Myrmidon and Swordmaster classes they technically predate. We also have Soldiers that promote into Knights, and Snipers that promote into Bow Knights! Those are pretty weird too. We also have Saint as a second-tier class and Mages that promote into clones of Celica. Alm is not considered nobility upon receiving either of his classes, so having a title of nobility would not make very much sense. If either of the main characters were to have their class hijacked by Lord, it would be Celica, who actually does promote after something might happen that would justify it. Her second class is confirmed "Princess", though.

I'm more surprised they didn't change it to Swordmaster, but I'm glad this little quirk has finally been settled so I can stop referring to the class vaguely as 'Sword Fighter' or 'Promoted Mercenary.' Hero is not on the table and could never be on the table, because it is Alm's promoted class. It's similar to how "Hero" was unique to Greil and Ike in the Tellius games -- and actually in more ways than one, because the Myrmidon line substituted for it there too. Though it was handled a bit differently; Gaiden only replaced Hero itself, while Tellius removed the entire line.