Tharne

Talked about it in another thread : "In GD/Church Hubert isn't anywhere near the battlefield and since the Death Knight lures you out it's clear that they knew about their intentions to launch the Nukes, making it easier to locate them (and I suppose he has some kind of lab to pinpoint them) , during BE he was just on the battlefield and didn't know it would happen so he has nothing to go on to find their base."

From a post I saw on reddit, the B Rank Battalions are most of the time better than the A Rank. Battalions analysis

I agree with you about this path being the first one for a majority. And it is (imo) precisely why it is shorter with lots of things left unanswered, because they wanted people to play the other routes. I also don't find it to be a problem that it is shorter and not dealing with TWSITD, on the contrary I found it quite fitting. But that's probably because I view Edelgard's route as the bad ending (like a Visual Novel).

Last BE (Edel) Chapter :

This is stated nowhere in the game. (If so point me to it.) What we know is that Rhea created 12 bodies (throughout the ages most probably) which she implanted with the Crest Stone of Sothis, that's it. She never did anything with Crests themselves. (Crest Stone =/= Crest) The Crest research to gift people two crests is entirely on TWSITD, since they were the one to create them for Humans to begin with.

I think you misunderstood something with the game's plot and lore here.

What are you talking about ??? TWSITD don't work with rhea at all.

In GD/Church Hubert isn't anywhere near the battlefield and since the Death Knight lures you out it's clear that they knew about their intentions to launch the Nukes, making it easier to locate them (and I suppose he has some kind of lab to pinpoint them) , during BE he was just on the battlefield and didn't know it would happen so he has nothing to go on to find their base.

To instruct you have to raise Motivation, when you raise Motivation you raise support. If people don't get the requirement before month 11, they are rushing/not paying attention and have only themselves to blame, imo. (Comparing Kaze to the most important unit in your roster is not valid in my opinion, and again by just playing the game how it's intended to be played, you will obtain the necessary requirement) Also agree with your second point about the Church.

Gonna give my impressions on units from BL run : Byleth (Mage->Warlock->Mortal Savant) : Wanted to have some fun. He was fun. Dimitri (Cavalier->Paladin->Unique->Unique) : Cav/Pal screwed his Spd a bit but he was still a monster. Found him a lot more impressive than Edelgard. Dedue (Brigand->Grappler->War Master) : Like Raphael/Caspar (more tanky than Caspar though) he was really useful, he just kill/tank things. Felix (Thief->Swordmaster->Mortal Savant) : I'd say he's the strongest unit early game, at the end though...he could double things but had trouble killing them and squishy. Sylvain (Cavalier->Paladin->Dark Knight) : Slower than Felix but stronger/bulkier, he picked up when Felix started going down. Ashe (Brigand->Wyvern Rider->Wyvern Lord) : I liked him a lot, double and hit hard but...squishy as all hell. Annette (Mage->Warlock->Dark Knight) : Strong at the very beginning (because Wind weight nothing) and then was slow and squishy like nobody else. Mercedes (Priest->Bishop->Dark Knight) : Pray to the Goddess, she was a better damage dealer than Annette after a while and those sweet heals. Ingrid (Pegasus Knight->Falcon Knight) : Double anything but hit like a wet noodle (+ low dex = not even a big chance to crit), one of the best mage killer though. Cyril (Archer->Sniper->Bow Knight) : He was stupid to be honest. 1-Byleth 2-Dimitri 3-Cyril 4-Mercedes 6-Ashe 6-Dedue 6-Sylvain 6-Ingrid 6-Felix 10-Annette All those at 6 had their time to shine tbh.

Yes, when you go with her, you learn that and she says "my professor is a proxy.". I was like...wtf.

Since her coronation must be in presence of the Archbishop and that it wasn't the case, you could make a case that all she's doing is already outside of the law and usurping an Empire is probably punishable by the death penalty.

Seeing as how Edelgard and Hubert always "retreat" by teleportation magic (this is one of my biggest problem with the game tbh so much retreating while they are right the fuck in front of me...) I think that wouldn't work.

Lonato's story is that his son got killed for the "Tragedy of Duscur" while the real reason was an assassination attempt on Rhea by the Western Church. So the Western Church rebelling by trying to kill Rhea because they already tried to kill Rhea in the past isn't what I would called oppression. More like TWSITD is full on controlling the Western Church and are the sole responsible.

I see a lot of people here and there talking about Edelgard's route being the "secret" one or it was developed last because it has less chapters etc... If I develop a game where a fairly big portion of the game is about talking to your students/exploring the monastery, I intend for people to at least talk to each student every month and build a basic relationship with them, especially the Lord of their House. Missing Edelgard's route tells me more about the players (i.e. Rush mentality) than if the devs intended the route to be a "secret". Which I don't think they did at all, I even have the impression that the smaller number of chapters is a way to make the players ask themselves : "Wait, is that it ? Did I maybe choose the wrong side ?" For them to play the other routes. Also the fact that she was the most pushed Lord commercially doesn't make sense if you develop her route last, it's beyond stupid. They wanted people to invest in her more and side with her. (and realized that : Yes, you chose the wrong side.)

I really don't like the idea of paired endings (at least how it's handled in this game). If I don't pair Claude with Byleth does that mean I can't know that some TWSITD are apparently still alive ? Does that mean that even on a specific route the route isn't canon for everyone because they didn't save the same people, didn't pair the same people, etc ? I hate this tbh, the fact that if you follow all those A support, people declare love and propose to almost all of the opposite gender is awful writing. A support should be about friendship and S support should be restricted and exclusive (with a lot less possibility of S support, maybe even only 1 or 0 for some characters). The canon of a route should end at the fresco before watching the battle information/paired endings. So in the Golden Deer route, you put an end to all of the threats (The war, TWSITD, Nemesis) for example.

The purposes I talked about are just my interpretation of what I think are the reasons behind the creation of the Church (it's not stated in game, from what I know.) based on some of Rhea's dialogue. And I'm not saying that they can't be killed, just that they don't die because of aging making them see Time not in the same way as us.

For Rhea it's not really a war. Rhea and other Manaketes in this world seems to be immortal (I think ?) so their perception of time isn't the same at all. The brutal death of her Mother and almost all of her race is still fresh and will probably never go away (you can see that with the way Flayn talked about her past like it happened not so long ago while it happened, in fact, a very, very long time ago.). It could be even fresher in her mind than what Edelgard suffered at the hand of TWSITD. Her whole establishment of the church has in my opinion three purposes : -Protect the remaining Manaketes. (You could say "They can just go live somewhere else." But Fodlan is also their homeland since Sothis made them here and TWSITD is still around.) -A way for humanity (the Crest bearer's descendants especially) to repent for what they did to her people. (A little fucked up but since, like I said, she probably view Time in a different way than us, it is reasonable in her mind.) -Avoid another Nemesis. (That goes a little with point 1, but this one is more about protecting the Humans from themselves I think. Of course because of TWSITD we got another Nemesis, in fact two : Edelgard and well...Nemesis the Return.)

One of the huge turn-off about Edel is the fact that she lies to everyone (except Hubert and you) to gain their support. After the nuking of Arianrhod, when Edel says that it's the church instead of TWSITD to the students (and probably all of her troops) that was the last straw. If the students/troops knew that they were working with TWSITD and that they were also that big of a threat (and that the church didn't do those horrible things she's talking about), they wouldn't keep fighting for her. With the talk of manifesto by Hubert/Edel, you can see that they are employing propaganda/disinformation to control everyone. Is this really a good leader (or even human being) ? To be honest every time I was alone with her during her route I wanted to see a prompt saying : "Cut off her head."

63/29/19 at lvl 41. Don't know if it's good or bad.

I just finished BE (Edel). I didn't know that my already low respect for Edelgard could go lower. Color me impressed, they did a good job. I don't hate her (There is only one (fictional at that) person that I felt real hate toward in all my life...Looking at you Griffith from Berserk which is I think a huge accomplishment). I just think she's a sad, manipulative and misguided human being who was shape by TWSITD with horrible experimentation and false information, in the end she ended up being their perfect tool. A shame that she didn't find the strength to scale the walls between her and the others, to reach her hand to Dimitri (especially) or Claude before starting this war. Onward to BL (then Church) now and I will do a very long post after them.

Just finished my BE playthrough (Edelgard's route) where I only used Teach + BE students. For the Battles/Victories stats they were all pretty close to each other (93 to 114 victories) except Linhardt at 63. If I had to rank them from how they performed throughout the game : 1 - Edelgard (Brigand->Warrior->unique->unique) Hits like a truck but wasn't really that tanky. 2 - Byleth (Pegasus Knight->Falcon Knight) Good mix defenses, very good speed/dex/strengh. (Still tends to gain a lot less Spd than Dex even though I had more % in Spd, oh well) 3 - Hubert (Mage->Warlock->Dark Knight) That dude carried the second half like a boss especially the last few maps. 4 - Caspar (Brigand->Grappler->War Master) Choose any target, send in Caspar, target dead. A little less tanky than Edelgard, but more crits/avoid. 5(tie) - Dorothea (Mage->Warlock->Gremori) Gets the job well done, magic is strong in this route. 5(tie) - Ferdinand (Cavalier->Paladin) Wasn't lucky at all in Str, in the first 20 lvl he gained 5 points...still the rest was above decent (Spd especially even though he was Cav/Pal). As Tanky as Caspar just less punch. 7 - Petra (Thief->Assassin) Okay I don't really know what happened, she was strong before timeskip and then poof...she can double anything...except she can't kill anything. 8 - Linhardt (Priest->Bishop->Dark Knight) HEALING! (Useful in the last few maps too because so many high Def/low Res targets) 9 - Bernadetta (Archer->Sniper-Bow Knight) Firing wet noodles isn't very fun, useful for the very few Flyers you fight in this route (almost none except one chapter and one paralogue). So yeah. I think based on the route some students will perform a lot better because there is not the same types of enemies. Edit : And I think apart from Byleth, I got screwed on a lot of them, I had a lot (and I really mean a lot) of 2-3 stats level up where it was almost always HP + Luck/Res/Cha...The best level ups I got were during the last map and I was pretty amazed to see them.

Getting doubled for 0 dmg x2 isn't really a problem though. And Gauntlets let's you have dead enemies...before they can even counter attack.