MaskedMaskoftheMasks

Hmm, kinda hard to tell, but doesn't seem like the four of new characters are exclusive to one of the routes because two of leaked dialogs are with each other(Coco seems to be Constance and they have work dialog with Hapi) Maybe they start out in different houses at least, but are just as recruitable as other units?

I mean, she does have her own scenes and maps and such(and on maps that appear on other routes it seems you start from the defensive location where enemy is located in in other maps so that makes them different enough). But apparently she doesn't have as many anime cutscenes and her route is shortest(18 chapters compared to 22 blue lions and golden deer have) And as said, she is only character who doesn't have her own unique paralogue story. Sure Shamir and Alois' use Derdriu's map from her route, but at least story wise its not identical to another character's paralogue.

It involves you killing Judith and Hilda though, so that is bad 😛 (also I might be wrong, but isn't Edelgard's paralogue basically Hilda's and Cyril's paralogue?)

I think TWSITD works as catharsis factor sort of deal. I mean because they are the obviously evil party, it feels good to beat them down, meanwhile you won't feel happy to take out Petra the OP Assassin 😛 But yeah, game might have even more of impact if there wasn't obvious bad guy faction running around. But same could be said if you couldn't recruit other students at all

I think I managed to kill him without using divine pulses by Claude attacking and surviving and Byleth finishim him with crit 40% crits are pretty reliable in this game for most part 😛

Another thing about Crimson Flower route is that after the campaign is over, Edelgard doesn't have Rhea to transform into dragon and take hit for Byleth when Thales tries to self destruct Shambhala 😛 Basically, when the endings says that war against them is long and arduous, you better believe it because they have no way of defending themselves for the missile attack and Thales is still alive to launch them(assuming he is only one who can do so. At least thats why I assume they didn't try to nuke Blue Lions). Like unless Thales is stupid enough to get immediately killed by what they think to be rebellious puppet ruler, the war against them is going to be long and bloody.

I think its because Ashe on GD path always leaves party post time skip to show up as enemy in mission, while Lorenz does same on BL. So maybe in those two cases you need to have recruited them pre timeskip to be able to spare them post timeskip

Well we can figure one thing out at least: Arundel secreted Edelgard way to Kingdom and then when he stopped donating to church and started planning Tragedy of Duscar, he suddenly secreted Edelgard back to Empire. So its possibly that original Arundel wanted Edelgard away from kingdom, maybe to avoid her being part of crest experiments or for some other political reason. But yeah, its really hard to say which one was done by real Arundel and which wasn't

You probably need to recruit him pre timeskip first for that to work

Lysithiea on Blue Lion route post his defeat comments on Arundel's personalty going drastic change into cruel direction so it does seem like Arundel was replaced. Tomas' personality is the biggest question mark since most of monastery staff we meet weren't there before his break, so its both possible Solon was much better actor or that as mild mannered librarian nobody just knew them that well

All of the faculty trainers aren't available every month

Well if you want to see Crimson Flower version of this, someone did record videos of all of them(and Ignatz accidentally twice)

I mean, thats why I take screen shots on switch. In 3ds that didn't matter because I had to save over the old files anyway if I started enough many new playthroughs. There were like only 3 save files on 3ds

Oh yeah, one more thing that people misunderstand that I wanted to point out, I finally found the quote for it: On Crimson Flower route, Edelgard doesn't apparently destroy church completely. I'm not sure what exactly happens, but apparently pragmatism happens and they keep institution around? How I know this? Well this is apparently Hanneman and Manuela ending on that route. After the war, Hanneman and Manuela held a grand wedding ceremony, to which all of their many students were invited. Later, after the church was transformed and rehabilitated under the super vision of the Empire, the Officers Academy finally reopened, with a renewed focus on accepting students regardless of status and offering classes on a wider variety of practical subjects. Hanneman and Manuela returned to work as teachers, almost as if nothing had changed, and filled the halls with their banter in the way only married couples can. Sooo uh yeah, not sure what up with this.

As someone who finds post game stuff kinda anti climactic, I'm kinda confused its popular enough that it being missing is "worst thing" for some people. Like, post game content in all fire emblem games has just been fighting repeatedly on generic maps generic enemies and grinding without any plot, it doesn't really feel fun to me

Ye didn't comment on Silver Snow(saw Crimson Flower, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind there) route from what I've seen so I take it that is the one ye haven't finished yet? Anyhoo, game definitely avoids confirming all details. Like on Arundel, we know that on year tragedy of duscur happened he abrusply stopped donating to the church and Lysithea wonders on Blue Lion route after he dies on why did his personality change so radically at one point to really cruel. So considering that all kill & replace victims have had characters comments on their personality changing, it is likely Arundel was also replaced around that time. That doesn't answer to what happened to Patricea though or why Thales didn't want heroes to examine Kronya's body despite the fact nobody in the cast apparently practices autopsies since nobody notices anything strange about Arundel or Cornelia 😛 But yeah, I agree that Black Eagles route seems to feel odd in sense it doesn't make sense for all students to be joining that path and it kinda has to bend the writing backwards to make it make more sense.(Like why the heck does Sothis' creststone dissolve on this path but not Silver Snow? Especially since you can still s support Sothis so she isn't permanently gone)

Since nobody has commented on it yet I think: You have to do both Lorenz x Catherine C & B before timeskip I think

I mean, in second route you are fighting against her so you shouldn't mind that one 😛

When it comes to topic of Agarthans, I think calling them bad villains because they are the most evil faction(I mean they are entirely driven by vengeance and desire to be supreme) is bit missing the appeal of them. I mean, they are the ancient civilization of technologically advanced subterranean humans who kill and replace important political figures and have so infiltrated war and wide empire and other nations in order to plan their grand conspiracy and experiments. They are basically mole people conspiracy and that is hilariously awesome 😛 They aren't supposed to be morally complex even if they have understandable motivation for their vengeance, they are supposed to be "Oh hey, we are fighting evil ancient conspiracy theory, cool". Its kind of same feeling as "Oh, hey, we are now fighting army of dragons, that is cool" And on Death Knight: You only learn who he is if you have Caspar and Mercedes in post time skip party and do their paralogue, which unlocks extra CGI on Blue Lions route when Death Knight finally dies. It doesn't really explain the details of why he is so crazy, but as I said, he isn't exactly a deep character, he is basically the bloodthirsty brute general villain type.

I don't think Death Knight and Black Knight are really comparable outside of the "Mysterious Super Strong Enemy General Whose Face And Name You Don't Initially Know" factor. Like, Death Knight is straight up crazy and serial killer 😛 You never really learn what made him to be what he is, but implication is that he killed everyone in his family(reading the library, Emile who was also heir to the house disappeared right after every other house member died) and then joined up imperial army. He doesn't really seem to care about anything but fighting even if he has random acts of kindness or something akin to that. Hes not really hiding his identity behind a mask, he is so crazy he wears the mask all the time.

Eh, I actually prefer this game's version of doing A supports to S supports. Always thought that S supports were kinda hamfisted "And now, they love each other" while I think this game's A supports do good job of leaving open for future development(even the majority of more romantic ones allow possibility of it not happening in the future) Like, I think it comes down to that if there are S supports, then writer believe they HAVE to be romantic and about one topic 😛 While a supports in this game don't necessarily need to end in "And now we promise to marry each other" and more like "Now we are super close friends who might get even closer in future" S supports also felt disconnected from previous three supports, because support chain's storyline had to end at the A, meaning S support is basically just additional "and now they propose". Meanwhile if S support was final part of the storyline, that would make it so that all characters with S supports have to have romantic storyline through C-A unless they want S support come out of nowhere.

I think that is because you can't recruit Hilda on Black Eagles until you are on church path, so they made it possible to complete on BE route too if you go for church route

I have to say that Marianne with blutgang is actually super good Heck the combat arts that turn spears/swords into magic attacks are super good, not as good as just using magic class, but decent enough that they work

Okay, some misconceptions here I want to clarify: 1) Crests do not magically disappear upon Immaculate One's death. It doesn't happen on Church route, so why it would happen in BE route? Byleth's heart just starts beating and they lose Sothis' powers just for whatever reason on Crimson Flower. Crests are still mentioned in character endings and such.(such as Lysithea & Edelgard's paired ending makes note of them doing research on them removing or surviving with their dual crests and Hanneman's & Linhardts endings mention them,and such. Sylvain's endings on Crimson Flowers imply crests still exists. You get the point.) 2) Edelgard doesn't "Crush" Those Who Slither In The Dark offscreen. The endings imply there was second about just as long war with them afterwards 😛 We don't have enough information on them to say why this is the case on this route, since they act differently on every single route. On Church route Nemesis never attacks you after Thales and Shambhala is defeated, while in Golden Deer they do, on Blue Lions route they never try to nuke you, but on otherhand Thales dies while disguised as Arundel so maybe they had Magical Nuclear Launch Codes with them, but again they don't use Nemesis so that leaves questions open of why they stay hidden after Myson is defeated in final chapter. (on Claude & Byleth's paired ending the remnants of TWSITD join up with imperial remnants to attack Derdriu but then get surprised by Almyran reinforcements. So they still exists even after ending of golden deer route) Like without knowing more on how Agarthans operate, its kinda hard to say why they don't act identically on every route. 3) Game itself doesn't make any moral judgments on any of the endings, just says what they did during their reign, neither does game comment on what happens generations after their reign is over. So saying that game portrays all routes as good guys if Byleth joins them is bit incorrect, since you need to play all routes to get all points of views on the matter. And Claude and Dimitri don't really have issue with Edelgard's ideals, just her methods to achieve them and whether its right to use those kind of methods in first place. On Blue Lions route Dimitri expresses that he thinks Edelgard's methods are just continuing cycle of strong trampling on the weak and I can't really disagree with that since her methods do really support might make right type of thinking 😛 The meritocracy type society doesn't really support people who aren't good enough to raise in ranks and it doesn't protect them from those higher in ranks exploiting them. So you can't really claim "Oh Edelgard was in moral right all along" unless you truly believe end justifies the means. 4) Regardless of whether you agree with Edelgard's ideals or not, she IS nationalistic and biased against other nations. Like she sees kingdom and alliance as poor offshoots of empire, believes in empire's propagandist version of history and thinks Claude isn't capable of achieving her ideals because he is outsider(meanwhile she doesn't know the true history of Fodlan either) Even on route where she is least cruel, she is still anti-hero at best. She knowingly sacrificed innocent people in order to achieve her goals and that is something she says multiple times in different routes. 5) I find it kinda funny how lot of Edelgard fans miss the point that Rhea and Edelgard are super duper similar.

[spoiler=] Doesn't Crimson and Gunther die on third path?