TheWill

It doesn't excuse her being water because they've established affinity = element. This is a precedent, a fact. As long as a characters affinity is in FEH, their element will be the same as their affinity. Her affinity is light, thus she should be light in FEH. This means more than any arbitrary ties to water you come up with.

I just wish they'd change Eirika to light... And give you a limited number of pseudo-blessings that let you change your Eirika water-blessed units to light for free. This is going to be jarring for me knowing her affinity is light. Honestly, I'd like Grima to be dark, too. But it's whatever. There is no excuse for Eirika being water. They have already established that affinity = element. Eirika's affinity is light and thus, Eirika should be light. At least with Grima, it's only logic that dictates they should be Dark element. The 3DS games didn't have an affinity system, so we'll never know for sure (although it's extremely probable Robin would be dark affinity anyway).

My favourite artists are Hidari, Asatani, Wada (FE8), Senri (FE9-10) and HACCAN. Any of those would be great choices. Other fine choices include Daisuke, HAKO, Konfuzi Kokon and Maiponpon. IMO though, a lot of artists in FEH have only drawn burly male characters or cute females, an artist would be required to have skills to do both.

I did think they'd eventually add new seasons. I'd prefer if they added a third active season to balance it out, though. A light/dark season would be a bad inclusion without the proper time to actually create efficient teams for Arena during these seasons.

Not a fan personally, would've preferred if he was on the previous banner, but eh, people wanted him so it's fine. FGrima needs to go through, Takumi or Micaiah better be next.

Definitely exciting either way! Although I really do hope Shareena gets some ample development this Book.

Tbh, I thought it was their parents. It's not too unreasonable for her mum to have a similar hairstyle, right?

To be fair, mostly every side character that are already in Heroes fell off in popularity. That's due to a higher number of votes going towards characters not in the game yet. And Lute did still score better than say... Cormag, who is also a pretty popular Sacred Stones character. There are a lot of non-"meme" characters that fell off as well, I think it's just a byproduct of how people are voting. I'm really sorry! It was not at all meant to be a jab at anyone, I apologize for wording it the way I did.

People throw meme accusations for popularity out all the time now... It also makes me want to rip my hair out when people say Mia/Lute/Joshua only got in thanks to the memes like Dorcas. Prety sure it was the xXl00t meme and Mia's... voice acting. But I don't even know what memes were associated with Joshua? Maybe I'm an odd ball since I legitimately like all three characters, of which all three helped carry their respective playthroughs for me. Never once did I associate my fondness for them due to memes and yet I see the claim for their popularity being attributed to memes thrown around so much I have no idea anymore.

That's definitely not true. I mean, I'm pretty sure there are Westerners disliking the Japanese version, too. But, from my experience with Gacha and seeing the Japanese audience, they tend to be a lot more unforgiving and vocal. This isn't just Fire Emblem: Heroes, but the same occurs with Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius, Star Ocean: Anamesis and so on. I'm pretty sure due to how prevalent mobile gaming is, they're more critical when it comes to this. They were having dislike majorities long before the Western audience was. Even the Niconico ratings for the last FEH channel -- which the Western audience liked, the Japanese audience had a strong negative majority. Does that mean we should take them or the Western dislikes seriously? Nope. Bottom line is always going to be how much money they make. As long as people keeping spending, IS will continue to do whatever they want. Although, I'm sure that if they're aware, IS wouldn't like the fact that the banners went from overwhelmingly positive reception to slowly equalizing likes/dislikes and now having a majority dislike ratio. The games shift from overwhelming positivity... to its current degradation. It'll be interesting to see how they'll react going forward. At the very least, January and March will have a positive like ratio unless they somehow balls those banners up. IMO, that's really unlikely though.

Oh, absolutely. I'd be a lot less upset if they distributed the banners more fairly - although as you said, they have other priorities right now, I'm just... unhappy with the treatment of half the series at this point. I've been waiting for a Valentia, Magvel, Tellius, Binding Blade and to a lesser extent, an Archanea and (non-alt) Thracia banner for such a long time and to see half of these used as a pre-emptive attempt to halt backlash makes it even more frustrating for me. The only excuse for Binding Blade that I could see justifying the wait is a potential Echoes, but even then... To be fair, her voice lines were added to the game like two months ago. So we knew she'd be playable, I just don't agree with the context of which it happened. A two-person banner feels unnecessary and Hrid definitely shouldn't be a Legendary Hero, even tho it's definitely hinting towards it.

I disagree. I've been waiting for more Tellius units since January this year and to see how beyond repair their priorities are with a Fates banner no one asked for and now this? Beyond ridiculous. Extremely mad that they're using Binding Blade and Radiant Dawn as an attempt to "calm the masses" knowing that these banners are what they have planned to keep us satisfied for what? 4-5 weeks?

People didn't want FatesAwakening because we wanted other games to get the spotlight. Heroes isn't the game that people wanted to supplement that void.

Ugh, this banner is terrible. Not as bad as the Fates banner, but very, very close. If Hrid is next legendary hero over Micaiah, I'm going to be fuming.

If they keep adding new additions, making balance changes and such, I'd really like the modes. I'd particularly like new structures, especially one that punishes horses and dancers. That'd be a god send for both defense and offense. Having enemies suicide before you cna break both aether pots is incredibly frustrating. I'm thinking of building up a gravity healer just for the sake of it...

I thought funneling votes was the popular option? I always split my vote, but I thought I was in the minority. As you all have said, I'd really like them to revamp the voting system. But I'm impartial anyway, I'm fine with whoever wins. I guess I wouldn't like Loki or Laegjarn to win? I just feel the Heroes characters need additional development to really be "Legend" worthy, but that is my own personal criteria/bias. I kind of dislike the recency trend where being 'new' and 'unplayable' causes the character to get funneled a large percentage of votes, but overall, I'd be fine with them winning, too. I would just prefer Eirika, Micaiah, Azura and so on. Males is between Marth, Alm, Reinhardt and Chrom. Any of 'ems fine, but R.I.P whoever loses since Three Heroes is going to predictably dominate CYL4. I'm particularly curious to see what they do for Legendary Heroes next year. We're running out of popular lords and if they continue the "2 lords per game/country" trend, we'd even see some less important characters like Lilina get a legendary alt (to match Roy, assuming they maintain this pattern).

They showed the midterm rankings on the first CYL, as well. It's essentially a precedent at this point.

Kinda underwhelming content-wise, November feels like a filler-month, I guess they're backing on the consecutive seasonals next month. Personally, three banners a month is preferable but that might be expecting too much.

Like I said, there is nothing wrong with your opinion. I was just pointing out that Sacred Stones isn't necessarily a good example in terms of general opinion, since even though you disliked the cast, Sacred Stones is typically known for having one of the strongest supporting casts in the franchise. This supports TC's notion that smaller casts have higher quality writing, although it's still a premature conclusion. Quality cast is purely a subjective notion, and neither side is wrong in how they feel about a particular cast. I completely agree that Echoes of Valentia's support conversations hurt it's cast, as even though they were present, they were so small in number and some felt almost entirely pointless aside from maybe one or two narrative quirks (eg. Faye & Silque). As for the comments on base conversations, it's absolutely fine to not be invested by them. However, to say base conversations didn't flesh out the Valentian cast is factually incorrect. Base conversations absolutely fleshed out the cast in Echoes and gave more insight and depth into their personal thoughts, feelings and anxieties even better than a majority of support conversations. If you dislike the way this information was presented (in a one-way conversation), that's completely understandable, but the conversations did provide a lot of humanizing aspects and even though they didn't click with you personally, to claim "barely did anything to flesh their characters" isn't true. The reason I said they're "must-haves" is because the individual character becomes the sole narrative focus for the brief conversation. Supports can provide the same personal insight as base conversations, however, as support conversations depend on the interaction between two individuals, it becomes difficult to implement personal insight into the character unless it's particularly relevant to the relationship between the two supporting characters (which, in most cases, it's not). I feel like this type of "conversation" is a great addition adding a personal flair to each character rather than the say, regurgitated "Charlotte wants to marry a rich man" that happens in virtually every male support conversation she has. Interesting, I appreciate your insight. At times I actually felt the base conversations were integrated very well, for example all the Ram villagers having their base conversation change to discussing Alm and Celica's relationship after the falling out between their reunion felt very natural narrative-wise. Or members of Celica's army reacting to the revelation of her lineage. As for point B, is that necessarily a bad thing? As humans, we're flexible and dynamic. We can have something effect us on a personal level, but whether we bring this up within a conversation will completely depend on how that conversation is going. For example, in her base conversation, Catria remarks that a person described her as cold and distant, causing her anxiety and self-doubt towards her own demeanour whilst wondering if this was a consequence of her upbringing. This isn't something she relays in her support conversation with Palla or Est, but IMO that just adds to the realism. With different people, you discuss different things. It doesn't need to be brought up to multiple people you talk to.

With how Intelligent Systems has absolutely neutered the Paper Mario series, pushed Fire Emblem into a direction more aligned with "dating sims" to appeal to the otaku fanbase and essentially abandoned the Advance Wars series... I have a very poor impression of them right now. It doesn't help that Three Houses has had virtually no news since the initial trailer and Heroes has been in a controversial state ignoring the existence of almost half the franchise and regurgitating the same characters over and over. I do have positive thoughts towards the company as well, but corporate and monetary decisions, as well as essentially ignoring fans in the case of the Paper Mario franchise, has made me especially jaded towards them. It's worse, because Paper Mario and Fire Emblem were beloved franchises to me. I'm definitely hoping Three Houses invigorates the spark the franchise used to give me (although I'm skeptical to the similarities to the Persona series), whilst the Paper Mario series, I... really don't have any hope at this rate. If the Switch entry is no good, I'll give up on it.

You're completely right that a large cast is not the determinant factor for a weaker cast. As you said, a larger cast, requires more resources to individualize each playable character. Even in Fates, which did try to individualize every playable unit, there were still characters shafted like Reina, Scarlet and Yukimura which severely limited their potential. This is especially disconcerting considering support conversations were the only method of character exploration in Fates (and previous FE's). This is mirrored by other installments like Radiant Dawn and Shadow Dragon where support conversations didn't exist which hurt the overall cast tremendously. From a gameplay perspective, it made sense not to have (real) support conversations in Radiant Dawn due to the narrative and chapter structure, but it essentially killed characters like Vika, Kyza and Lyre. Moving forward from Valentia, if full voice acting is the baseline requirement for every future Fire Emblem entry, I can see them struggling with a larger cast in voicing each story conversation and support. I can definitely see more budget "Reina's" who only have a single support option, which would really suck. Whilst I completely understand your reasoning for why you feel SoV's cast is boring, I don't agree with your comments on the base conversations. The base conversations in Echoes were superbly written and unlike pretty much every Fire Emblem entry before it, these conversations actually portrayed the characters in a relatable way that made them feel like real human-beings. The removal of the 'relationship' dynamic that support conversations hinge upon allowed for a singular focus on a characters thoughts, motivations and anxieties. They gave more depth and insight to the Valentian cast better than most support conversations do. IMO, if there's anything that needs to stay from Echoes, it's memory prisms and base conversations. They were great additions! The biggest problem with the base conversations was that they were randomized and so most people missed a majority of them anyway.

Sacred Stones is a bad example, because even if you don't enjoy the cast (which is perfectly fair), it's typically regarded as having a very strong cast, if not, one of the best the franchise. It's also one of the few Fire Emblem's that actually integrated a sizable amount of playable side-characters into the overarching narrative. I have the same sentiment. The weakest casts in the franchise tend to be the largest ones, especially when characters become nothing more than a ball-of-stats with virtually no characterization. It wasn't till Fates where all characters, despite its overwhelming cast size, got a considerable amount of characterization through their supports. Although, that comes with its own flaws considering how cookie-cutter some of the characters are in exhibiting generic anime tropes. As for the TC, I'm pretty certain Three Houses will have a huge cast. Even ignoring the fact that they need to make a sizable amount of characters to fill out the allies or other family members of the three separate houses. I'd doubt they'd ever go back to the Sacred Stones or Valentia-size of cast since a big cast is completely within Intelligent Systems interest as it indirectly increases the longevity of Fire Emblem: Heroes, assuming the game will continue that far down the road. The more characters there are, the more likely they'll get a new monetary "hit" side character like Tharja, Camilla, Nino and so on.

I dislike most lords since a lot of them fall into similar categories without looking through detailed supports to find nuances that differentiate between them. In my preferred order of favourites to least: Lyn Ike Ephraim Eirika Sigurd Hector Micaiah Celica Lucina Alm Eliwood Marth Lief Roy Seliph Robin Chrom Corrin From 1-10, I enjoy them all a lot. Anything afterwards, I feel indifferent about until the final three who make me want to rip my hair out.

It's been a solid experience right now. Hope they keep updating it with new options, especially when people start hitting higher tiers in the future.

I really hope they rerelease this skill in the next few months, but on a character I actually like. It pulled off skipping Summer Noire, I'll definitely go for +10 Mikoto (if she demotes, not pulling for her). The fact that she compliments my Raven/Karla/Fjorm Infantry team is perfect. Might even go for a Loki to get the Duel skill in the future.