Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Oh? You don't like Three Houses supports? But what about Dimitri/Marianne, huh? Or Felix/Dedue? How about Alois/Shamir, huh? That's not even mentioning Ferdinand/Linhardt, or Balthus/Constance. What's that? You thought I'd forget to bring up Edelgard/Dorothea? You thought wrong. And if you think you can get out of this without Flayn/Seteth or Ashe/Ingrid coming up, well, you'd better think again.

The hilarious thing is that I know for a fact that I've seen some of them but I couldn't even begin to tell you what happens in them. I just have no memory retention whatsoever for Three Houses supports.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Important distinction - Edelgard had Rhea locked up. We don't know whether or not the Agarthans were aware of her capture. The fact that Rhea is found alive and (relatively) unharmed suggests they were not. Even though that's an implausibly big secret for Edelgard to keep for that long.

It's also colosally stupid of Edelgard too. Like sure Edelgard might not expressly wish to kill her enemies, but Rhea is way too powerful to be left alive. And the state in which she was kept in prison could well be considered worse than just killing her (the lengths she must have went to to ensure Rhea didn't simply turn into a dragon right in their capital must have been quite extreme). I'm pretty sure they did it just so Rhea could show up to explain the plot in Verdant Wind and Silver Snow.

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

The first proper Paralogue won't show up until Chapter 6. I generally like how this game does Paralogues, but it really feels like they drop them onto you in a "zero to sixty" fashion.

It would help if they were support based, which I'm pretty sure they're not. I think they're just a simple check of "Are these two units in your army and is this the right chapter" which means for of units who don't require recruitment from other houses or get their paralogue in part 2, the answer is yes.

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So he let his adopted son go to school there?

Isn't he even the slightest bit worried that could have bad consequences, either for him or for Ashe?

Evidently Lonato didn't give two shits about Ashe. Do they even have a unique conversation? *checks* They do...but it doesn't really address the issue of why Lonato didn't try and take Ashe out of the situation. At least the unique dialogue is there. That's one good thing I can say about Three Houses, it did have plenty of unique battle convos.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Ah. Ah, so that's why she's so insistent on the class doing it. It's not actually primarily a service to the world, it's an extremely creepy threat.

I wonder if she sent the Black Eagles and Golden Deer to hang around and observe too (in this route of course, substitute Blue Lions for one of them if you're playing the other two, because everything in White Clouds is bloody the same).

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And yet again we get an entire fucking week off of classes for some reason. Why do we get so many week-long vacations?

...Actually, oddly, if we only get 15 school days a month, that actually kinda justifies the complete lack of any proper vacations or holidays, since that still totals to exactly 180 school days a year, which is at least the modern American standard.

...Except they're implied to have class on Saturdays too. But actually, that works even better. Because if we count Saturdays too, then it's 18 school days a month, which is 216 a year, which is a little more than the modern Japanese standard.

Aaaaanyway...

 

Maybe the paralogues canonically occur in those weeks off. Because the notion of up to three of them occurring in a single weekend is absurd.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Fuck it, this isn't making the playlog go any faster. I'm just going to shut the fuck up, complete the monastery visit, and get back to you when I'm done. No matter what happens, I will not go back to this laptop until the next free time event.

It is currently 12:18 PM. I'll let you know what time it is when I return.

Alright, I'm back, at 12:39. So 21 minutes later. I did 11 counts of fishing (fastest possible time with that, since I got perfects continuously until the very last A press), got a support with Annette, recruited Constance, finished all the quests for the month, and did the lessons for everyone.

 

Why are you so determined to do so much fishing anyway? Is it mostly for the professor rank? Because imo, fisihing can be ignored completely. Sure it'll net you some materials to cook some meals, but meals only give you a few stat boosts, which aren't super important in this game compared to skills and combat arts that let you mop the floor with enemies. Cooking is mostly useful for restoring tutoring points to get weapon ranks faster. And that purpose can be done with basically any ingredients.

 

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Why are you so determined to do so much fishing anyway? Is it mostly for the professor rank? Because imo, fisihing can be ignored completely. Sure it'll net you some materials to cook some meals, but meals only give you a few stat boosts, which aren't super important in this game compared to skills and combat arts that let you mop the floor with enemies. Cooking is mostly useful for restoring tutoring points to get weapon ranks faster. And that purpose can be done with basically any ingredients.

I want to get a handle on how long it actually takes, bare minimum. Second the market starts selling the stuff, I'm gonna take a whole month's worth of bait and time how long it takes me to do it. Because it feels like it takes forever and I want to know for sure how much time it actually takes.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

It's also colosally stupid of Edelgard too. Like sure Edelgard might not expressly wish to kill her enemies, but Rhea is way too powerful to be left alive. And the state in which she was kept in prison could well be considered worse than just killing her (the lengths she must have went to to ensure Rhea didn't simply turn into a dragon right in their capital must have been quite extreme). I'm pretty sure they did it just so Rhea could show up to explain the plot in Verdant Wind and Silver Snow.

Maybe Rhea's survival is Edelgard's own insurance policy? Once Rhea has been killed, and the Agarthans find out, then they no longer have a use for Edelgard, and will likely attempt to dispose of her. So long as Rhea remains possibly alive, however, Twiztid won't move against her.

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

It would help if they were support based, which I'm pretty sure they're not. I think they're just a simple check of "Are these two units in your army and is this the right chapter" which means for of units who don't require recruitment from other houses or get their paralogue in part 2, the answer is yes.

I don't think that would particularly help. Some of the Paralogue pair-ups, like Linhardt/Leonie, don't even have supports. And for those that do, such as Ingrid/Dorothea, gating access behind support ranks just narrows the window of availability further. Like, if I don't recruit Dorothea until AM chapter 9, and don't get her to C support Ingrid until 11... that's it, I've basically run out of time to do their Paralogue.

My general changes would be: make some Paralogues happen earlier (the Jeralt one I proposed would open in chapter 4), and move more of them back into Part 2 (say the non-CF Annalogue, or Seteth/Flayn as an SS exclusive). That way, it doesn't feel as though all my weekends are booked in chapters 7 through 11.

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Evidently Lonato didn't give two shits about Ashe. Do they even have a unique conversation? *checks* They do...but it doesn't really address the issue of why Lonato didn't try and take Ashe out of the situation. At least the unique dialogue is there. That's one good thing I can say about Three Houses, it did have plenty of unique battle convos.

Presumably, he thought Ashe would be safe at Garreg Mach. I don't think Lonato envisioned the combat ever reaching Ashe. His whole mission basically boiled down to "suicide by Catherine".

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Maybe the paralogues canonically occur in those weeks off. Because the notion of up to three of them occurring in a single weekend is absurd.

A better design, in narrative, would've been to have Paralogues (and maybe Quest or Aux battles) take the place of a week of training. Just think of it as a "field trip". And that way, we'd escape the absurdity of zinging to as many as three spots across the continent in a single day.

Not sure how it'd be for gameplay, though. Suddenly every weekend is a monastery weekend.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I want to get a handle on how long it actually takes, bare minimum. Second the market starts selling the stuff, I'm gonna take a whole month's worth of bait and time how long it takes me to do it. Because it feels like it takes forever and I want to know for sure how much time it actually takes.

I really don't think the designer's intent was for the average player to buy out the bait stock, and use it all up, every month. The caps are high to leave players with options, if they're weirdly into it. Not to say it's in any sense a well-balanced feature...

That said, they'll start selling it once you complete a Quest battle that mentions merchants. Coincidentally, right after the first "fistfuls of fish" event (which you should be saving up encountered bait for).

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

The hilarious thing is that I know for a fact that I've seen some of them but I couldn't even begin to tell you what happens in them. I just have no memory retention whatsoever for Three Houses supports.

I'm not even 100% on all of them, haha. If anything, the game has too much content for its own good - a single support chain, among many, in a game with other sources of characterization, may not stick with you.

That said, let's be sure not to conflate memorability with quality. The Vaida-Dorcas support chain, where they keep missing each other, is just memorable for being weird. And who could forget Saizo and Beruka's legendarily localized C-support?

[Jotari]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I want to get a handle on how long it actually takes, bare minimum. Second the market starts selling the stuff, I'm gonna take a whole month's worth of bait and time how long it takes me to do it. Because it feels like it takes forever and I want to know for sure how much time it actually takes.

Ah, so it's masochism.

8 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Maybe Rhea's survival is Edelgard's own insurance policy? Once Rhea has been killed, and the Agarthans find out, then they no longer have a use for Edelgard, and will likely attempt to dispose of her. So long as Rhea remains possibly alive, however, Twiztid won't move against her.

Maybe, but then I think the Agarthans would get pretty wise to that after a while. Or after five years. It also seems too, idk, realpotik for Edelgard. Like she's quite ideologically driven, for her to compromise her ideals (freeing the continent from Rhea, which is more easily accomplished on a permanent basis by ensuring Rhea is dead) as a guarantor on her own safety seems out of character. I think one other theory that was floating around for a while was that they needed Rhea's blood to create demonic beasts. Which could be part of the reason as to why Edelgard doesn't seem to have any of them in Crimson Flower.

 

[Alastor15243]

Hey, sorry, no update today. I was planning on it being a small one, but by the time I actually got to sit down and play, I realized I had less than an hour of free time today before like 7:00 at night that wasn't devoted to some pre-scheduled thing with friends. Morning obligations wound up taking way longer than I thought they would.

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 10: Break On Through to the Other Side

So, I'm using my Switch in handheld form gripless for the first time in ages because I accidentally stepped on my grip in the dark on Saturday night and broke it, and the replacement hasn't come yet. Also, the replacement isn't the same model because apparently the one I have now isn't being sold anymore, so I just have to hope I like the new one when it gets here.

But enough bitching about first world problems. Instead, let's bitch about Three Houses!

It's 8:40 now. I'll let you know when I get to the next proper story mission.

Aaaaand it's 9:35 now. So approximately one hour later, I've finished the rest of the month. I restricted myself to taking minor notes on my phone, small single-sentence things, like I used to do when ranking the Igavania games since that wasn't a playlog so much as me writing up my thoughts when the game was done.

A couple of supports happened with Byleth, specifically Ashe, Mercedes and Sylvain. I only have commentary on the last one.

Now, when I first learned about Sylvain in this game that has branching dialogue options, I was kinda hoping that this game wouldn't railroad the player into not being swooned by him. I thought it would be hilarious if they gave you the option to actually have your character reciprocate the flirt's advances. Of course, that didn't wind up happening because they don't really do much of value or consequence with this “multiple replies” system other than punish the player for skipping dialogue by reducing their support points (not that support points are hard to get in this fucking game, but it's the principle of the thing that annoys me). But they thankfully avoid the issue of railroading the player into not liking his advances... by having Sylvain be a nigh-sociopathic, hedonistic, misanthropic shitbag you walk in on being complete garbage to some random girl in town.

Yes, in terms of morals around women, the “shameless flirt” tier list goes something like this:

Sain

Gatrie

Inigo

Saul

Sylvain.

Sylvain is simultaneously the most successful with, and most despicable towards, women, and while his backstory makes him... I guess kinda interesting, in a way, I honestly just don't like him, and I can stand him the least of all the shameless flirts, which is already an incredibly hit-or-miss archetype for me.

As for other things I wanted to point out from my notes and briefly discuss:

1: Holy shit is the promotion animation anticlimactic and lame. Every single other game in the entire series, with the exception of Gaiden, makes it this huge dramatic affair with big flashing lights and thunder and this growing, soaringly triumphant music. Here, they couldn't even be bothered to give it its own music. They just recycle the “got a new ally” music. Hell, they don't even give it sound effects. This sequence genuinely feels unfinished.

2: Doing the Roster Retrieval sidequest reminded me of one of the many, many things that annoy me about the game's usability: you can't highlight individual enemy ranges on the prep screen like you can in the DS and 3DS games. Pressing the A button on enemies does nothing until you're actually playing the map. Needless to say this can make working out first-turn plans way more annoying than it had to be.

3: We still can't repair, and that's starting to get ridiculous, because we're way, way past the point where we could reasonably be expected to still be using our starting equipment. The only option I have is buying new weapons I'm never going to use all of once I get everything repaired. Why exactly are they waiting this long to introduce repairs?

4: I got one of those cheap notifications added post-update saying that I can use intuition during tea parties... but I'm 90% sure I haven't unlocked tea parties yet.

Also, I got everyone to level 5 and promoted them to their beginner classes, and I then immediately went into the menu that lets you change appearance and made everyone wear their uniforms, because yet again it's frankly jarring how lame and awkward the generic class outfits everyone wears are.

...Alright. Time to get on with things.

...But first, I need to do some supports I've unlocked, and then it'll be time to do the chapter battle.

...But I accidentally forgot about the supports and clicked the battle first, so let's see the dialogue first.

Ah yes, and now we learn about the “relics”. These creepy-looking things that the church claims are holy weapons given by the goddess when in reality they're made out of dragons' bones. Outrageously morbid and creepy, but I honestly like it as a concept.

Alright, so, Ashe shows up and is really confused about why Lonato is rebelling, and now... oh, I finally get to be told outright what the Tragedy of Duscur is!

...Wait, no, I remember this dialogue. I've been told this before, multiple times. It just completely failed to be absorbed into my mind. Huh.

So yeah, Lonato has a vendetta against the church because the church had his biological son executed for allegedly being involved in the Tragedy of Duscur. Apparently it wasn't even up to the Kingdom to do that, the Church just decided it has that authority and that it's their job.

...Okay, so Catherine says they did it because the Kingdom was in chaos, but uh... yeah, they didn't say Christophe was proven to have been involved. Just that he was accused.

“Whatever the truth behind that incident may be, Lord Lonato has harbored resentment toward the church ever since.”

Yeah. No shit, Catherine. The fact that you're even in a position to say the words “whatever the truth behind that incident may be” when the Church still executed him says all I need to know about how justified Lonato is in hating your guts. Specifically your guts, in fact, since apparently you're the one who turned him over for execution.

...Still doesn't explain why the fuck Lonato sent Ashe to school at the Monastery though.

...Actually, this doesn't really explain much of the Tragedy of Duscur... with regards to Duscur either. Hopefully I'll find out more later.

So, uh...

…

We're apparently taken completely by surprise regarding the strength of the enemy's resistance.

How, exactly?

We expected the battle to mostly already be won. But it isn't. And therefore, you would think, we should've gotten messages from the front requesting reinforcements, or bare minimum reporting that Lonato is still at large and could still pose a serious threat. And if the Monastery weren't getting messages, that should naturally be a sign that something happened to the messengers, and that therefore things must be pretty dang bad.

But no, the fact that we're facing much stronger resistance than Rhea expected at the beginning of the month is a complete and total shocker to everyone. Catherine didn't even expect to use her sword.

So I back out of the battle prep menu, back out of the “choose your battle” menu, and return to the monastery, and only then do I get a loading screen. And it finally occurs to me why they need one of those huge-ass fucking loading screens to load the “what do I do today?” menu.

Because they load the entirety of Garreg Mach Monastery every time you use it.

How do I know this? Because there's no loading menu when you select “explore”, you just go straight to exploring! They load a shitton of data that's only going to be used for one of the options you can pick!

But anyway, that farcical display of game design incompetence aside, time to check the supports.

First, Dedue and Dimitri.

...So Dedue and Dimitri's relationship is giving off serious Chrom and Frederick vibes, except... significantly less entertaining and significantly more uncomfortable, considering they're much closer in age, among... other things...

...Anyway, Dimitri apparently taught Dedue how to read and write.

...Okay, I can't say it's precisely because I'm interested in seeing the later supports in this chain... but I do want to. It's more like... it's more like my mind is demanding an explanation to justify what I just experienced, and hoping I'll get it.

Alright, now for Dedue and Mercedes.

...It's mostly discussing religion, and Duscur religion specifically.

The numerous uses of past tense words like “was” and “had” referring to Duscur... gives me some pretty clear and bleak implications for what the Tragedy of Duscur's fallout was.

Dedue: Duscur is a ruin.

...Ah. Yep. I figured as much, obviously, but... now I've got confirmation.

“But you're still here”.

Oh my god, if anything that makes it sound even worse. “You”. Singular.

But yeah, it's, uh... okay, the talk about the differences between polytheism and monotheism is... rudimentary, but I guess they're setting up for more later.

Oh dear.

Mercedes and Sylvain.

I'm genuinely curious how Mercedes is going to react to Sylvain. I'm predicting either being completely serenely un-annoyed by his behavior... or contemptuous sass delivered with a smile.

...Seems like it's more of the latter.

...Sort of. Sylvain actually seems to manage to turn this around to be something more innocent, and she seems to respond with goodwill.

...Damn, Mercedes has been driven away from her home twice? Oof.

And we get the slightest bit of decency from Sylvain, showing after she leaves that he's absolutely pissed off by Mercedes's story of her mother being used for her crest and clearly has genuine sympathy for her.

...Honestly, if characters were more selective about who they could join, I'd believe Sylvain could still be recruited to the Empire.

Alright, finally, Ingrid and Felix.

...Felix seems to genuinely despise doing anything resembling being in a leadership position. That's kinda cool, how they integrate his stats into his character. Hey, I praised it with Lowen, gotta praise it here. But apparently he does have lots of good ideas, apparently because he's well-read on the subject.

...Alright, I think I'm going to save the fight for tomorrow. Now that we've got everything leading up to it out of the way, that should be pretty straightforward. But for now, I wanna stop here to avoid getting burnout.

...This might be a good method: minimalist commentary while plowing through the month one day, and then a story battle the next.

...Problem comes when we start doing paralogues... those will make things messy.

But at any rate, I'm done here.

Stay safe, everyone!

Edited August 16, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

because yet again it's frankly jarring how lame and awkward the generic class outfits everyone wears are.

I'd say it's less the generic clothing which since Awakening that been awkward to me, as it is the generic bodies. Make Henry a Berserker in Awakening and make Gregor one too, exact same musculature. -But it's entirely understandable why they'd do this. If nonetheless suggesting that promotion involves instantaneously decapitating someone and popping their head -the soul of their being- onto a new lab-grown neck & the rest.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

4 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I'd say it's less the generic clothing which since Awakening that been awkward to me, as it is the generic bodies. Make Henry a Berserker in Awakening and make Gregor one too, exact same musculature. -But it's entirely understandable why they'd do this. If nonetheless suggesting that promotion involves instantaneously decapitating someone and popping their head -the soul of their being- onto a new lab-grown neck & the rest.

This doesn't really happen in 3H, though. Each character has a parameter that defines their body type. So, Grappler Ashe will have a different height and width than Grappler Dedue. This can change after the timeskip, too.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also, I got everyone to level 5 and promoted them to their beginner classes, and I then immediately went into the menu that lets you change appearance and made everyone wear their uniforms, because yet again it's frankly jarring how lame and awkward the generic class outfits everyone wears are.

Yeah the Beginner outfits aren't great. I do think they start to show more character in the Intermediate tier. Thief and Brigand, for instance, look really cool. Oh, and I'm a fan of how each character has their own colors. So, Dark Mage Linhardt has a splash of green, while that same spot is purple on Lorenz, for instance.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

We still can't repair, and that's starting to get ridiculous, because we've way, way past the point where we could reasonably be expected to still be using our starting equipment. The only option I have is buying new weapons I'm never going to use all of once I get everything repaired. Why exactly are they waiting this long to introduce repairs?

The game seems to wait until you're able to forge before it lets you repair. This comes into play even after the Blacksmith opens - I have a Rusted Silver Sword, but can't get it into working condition until B+ Professor Rank? I'd prefer they make repairing available from the get-go, and just gate forging or evolving to later down the line.

Oh, and this is magnified further if you turn on "Spirits of the Fallen". Wherein, you get a bunch of rusted weapons, and nothing to do with them.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

We expected the battle to mostly already be won. But it isn't. And therefore, you would think, we should've gotten messages from the front requesting reinforcements, or bare minimum reporting that Lonato is still at large and could still pose a serious threat. And if the Monastery weren't getting messages, that should naturally be a sign that something happened to the messengers, and that therefore things must be pretty dang bad.

But no, the fact that we're facing much stronger resistance than Rhea expected at the beginning of the month is a complete and total shocker to everyone. Catherine didn't even expect to use her sword.

The Knights of Seiros are pretty much incompetent and poorly organized, yep. With no wars to fight, and assured of their dominance, they've grown complacent. There's no way this'll come back to haunt them. Say, around chapter 12, and the five years that follow.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Because they load the entirety of Garreg Mach Monastery every time you use it.

How do I know this? Because there's no loading menu when you select “explore”, you just go straight to exploring! They load a shitton of data that's only going to be used for one of the options you can pick!

If you go down to Abyss, there's an additional loading bar. Also, when you come back from Abyss (even if you're ending your day off). This game is, uh, not optimized. 

[Interdimensional Observer]

38 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

This doesn't really happen in 3H, though. Each character has a parameter that defines their body type. So, Grappler Ashe will have a different height and width than Grappler Dedue. This can change after the timeskip, too.

I mustn't have noticed during the brief moments I glimpsed their 3D models. I was aware of the breast modifiers from learning of them elsewhere, but not anything else.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Sunwoo]

Sylvain/Mercedes is one of the genuinely good supports Sylvain has, where he's actually not as much of a remorseless asshole as usual and is actually more genuine. But I like Mercedes too much to pair her with Sylvain.

And, uh, yeah. Honestly, I played 3H three times completely with the fourth route in hiatus because of TWEWY (a far superior series to FE when it comes to storytelling, check it out if you can get into the gameplay) and I never 100% picked up on what the thing with Lonato and his biological son was. 3H did this thing where they were too ambitious with their shitty story and spread out a lot of lore and background stuff across multiple paths, failing to realize that enough people would quickly get bored of it.

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 11: Fog of Bore

So before we start with this fight, can I just say how weird it is that no discussion whatsoever has been made about how the rest of the Kingdom is reacting to this? The Church isn't requesting/“requesting” assistance, and there's no talk about the Kingdom demanding the Church let them handle it rather than sending armed forces into their sovereign territory?

Also, the Church's physical territory seems pretty tiny. How exactly do they secure their authority? Is there just a ton of religious fanaticism, so they don't need large numbers to make everyone else do as they say? But it still doesn't feel like the Church should have all that impressive of a military compared to literally any other Fodlan territory.

So I tried all the opposite dialogue options from what I did yesterday, y'know, to get some more info. And from what I remember it doesn't look like whether or not you say you know about the Tragedy of Duscur changes... literally anything about how Catherine explains it.

...It feels like loading screens are taking even longer than usual today. Or maybe I'm just noticing more just how frequently they need to be placed.

Alright, so, we get to our first fog of war map of the game. Yes, this game brings that back in full force when it only properly appeared in one game in the previous 10 years.

Surprisingly, of all of the absolutely infuriating things this game does to screw with blind players... I don't remember a single one of them that had to do with Fog of War. I was terrified the whole time during my Crimson Flower blind ironman's fog of war chapters, but nothing ever actually happened, or threatened to happen. I was just uncomfortable at not being able to see what was around me.

Also, amusingly, the game doesn't introduce the concept of torches to you before this. Usually in Fire Emblem games that have torches, you're told about them explicitly and then given a free torch in some capacity right before you need it. But nope, not here. They do sell them at the shop, but they do noting to draw your attention to them, which feels... odd, by Fire Emblem standards. Not that I suspect it's likely or wise for someone to get an item shop unlocked and not check out what's in it, but still, it's out of the ordinary. At any rate, I buy two torches, one for Professr and one for Felix.

Weirdly, after I start the fight, a map scene in which the units aren't already where I placed them begins, almost like this is a Pre-FE7 game where the story takes place after battle prep.

“Lord Lonato doesn't deserve such sadness and anger... now it's your turn to suffer!”

...This... good god, I'm sorry, but both the phrasing and the voice direction for this line just leave me completely unconvinced. This does not sound like someone who's emotionally invested in this conflict at all.

“You think we're just gonna do nothing while you try to kill our lord!?”

...Okay, that's better, but still not the best delivery.

Weirdly, nobody's making level-up comments. I didn't change any settings, so I'm not sure why that is.

And Catherine isn't saying anything whenever she kills an opponent, she just poses silently. Is that a green unit thing, or did I accidentally turn something off? Or did the game glitch out?

“I won't let you anywhere near Lord Lonato!”

Okay, that one's improved further still. Totally acceptable reading a this point, I'd say. Weird how all over the place those readings were though.

Also, I can't help but notice that green units don't have the game's rumble feature whenever their attacks connect. I barely even consciously acknowledged said feature was there until I realized how weird it felt when it didn't happen.

But yeah, we beat the dark mage in the middle of the map, and as a result, the fog is gone. And we get this really weirdly out-of-place cutscene. Not out-of-place as in bad... out-of-place as in good. As a matter of fact it's probably the best-looking sequence in the game, better than many CGI cutscenes. Ironically because it's the only scene in the entire game that both runs at a fluid framerate and uses an actual 3D environment. This is an actual scene, where shit happens. Catherine kicks the ass of two knights, and we're actually watching it happen rather than the camera turning away like it's something obscene for the characters' eyes alone. Imagine if support conversations, or story scenes, looked like this instead of just being people standing around and talking in front of painted-on backgrounds!

...But alas, near as I can tell this is literally the only time in the game that a scene like this happens.

“Thunderstrike Casandra! Your wretched zealotry killed my son!”

“Hahahahaha! The only name I answer to is Catherine!”

...Paraphrased, because I can't go back and re-read it.

...Okay, two things:

1: Apparently she got the Red Baron monicker “Thunderstrike” before she joined the church and got the actual Thunderbrand? Bit of an odd coincidence there. Unless she was given that name after joining the church by people who refuse to dignify her new name of Catherine? ...Or wait, did she have the thing all along and bring it with her upon defecting to the Church?

2: Just as a general principle, someone taking on a new name as a result of joining an organization is a very big red flag for how deep down the rabbit hole they are.

Aaanyway...

...Oh golly gee willikers! Look at that! The game spawned a bunch of units on the map on player-phase in response to an action one of my units took! While 95% of players aren't going to suffer any consequences of this... it's going to get way worse. When I get to a concrete example, then I'll finally explain the sheer agony of the mind this inflicts if you're trying to ironman.

But for now... just on principle this still pisses me off, because it was clearly put into place to prevent people from beating the map before the fog cleared. But in doing so, that means they actually actively envisioned the situation where they'd be ambush-spawning the player (someone advancing their units past the dark mage before killing him), and put it in regardless without the slightest bit of hesitation.

Well anyway, with the fog cleared, the rest of this battle will be pretty straightforward.

Oh hey, also, another glitch: if you cursor over the units that just ambush-spawned in, their movement and attack range won't highlight! It fixes itself the next turn thankfully, but just thought I should point that out.

Dimitri finally speaking up and commenting on the dying rebels makes me realize that he really should've had a moment where, I dunno, he tries to convince them to back down, or order them as crown prince? It's weird he's just silently working in the capacity of an extension of the church's power to suppress a rebellion in his own fucking country. That is such a comically petty and grotesque assertion of dominance and authority on Rhea's part that it's almost on the level of prima nocta.

...Okay, so I just realized. Annette's and Constance's Crests... have the same effect... but have different descriptions. One describes it as “occasionally conserves uses of attack magic”, while the other says “occasionally does not consume a use during magic attacks”. That... I know this is a minor nitpick, but it's just so bizarre to me. It almost feels like they forgot what the original description was and didn't even bother to check it. Or they wanted to hide the fact that they used the same Crest effect twice.

...Or did they? Do they do something subtly different and I've never noticed?

...Serenes Forest seems to say “no”. They're identical as far as I can tell.

But regardless, while I'm on the subject, crest descriptions utterly suck.

“Occasionally raises Mt when using a weapon”.

...Um...

...Okay.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with that information, game?

How “occasionally”?

“Raises Mt” by how much?

This description has given me literally nothing of substance that I can use to factor into my battle plans, game!

I see Catherine use foudroyant, and I have to wonder what the fuck the use case that has where a non-doubling, non-braving combat art will do more damage than just using the weapon normally. Even to foes it has the slayer effect on, it feels like usually attacking normally would do more damage. And it's for the same number of weapon uses in the best case scenario, where all four hits are needed to kill!

I just heard a female cry of pain when killing one of the last enemies before the boss, reminding me that this game has gender diversity among NPCs in every non-gender-exclusive class. And I've gotta say, while it's nice that they made it so that male or female units of any class can be NPCs... I genuinely think their resources would've been better spent almost any other way with regards to models and portraits. Maybe making different countries have different-looking troops. Or making it so that the Duscur and Almyran generics aren't all white. The latter of which causes some frankly ridiculous shit in one of the teacher paralogues.

Thankfully, Catherine goes after a stray enemy in the southwest, so I have all the time in the world to beat Lonato myself, and get Ashe's conversation with him.

I checked to make sure there was a talk option first, and there wasn't one, so now I'm gonna have Ash attack him.

Ashe... calls Lonato “Lonato” and not “father”. I just realized that. Is this that Japanese thing I heard about where adopted children are considered significantly more separate from their parents than biological children are? Like why Ophelia doesn't call her adoptive father “father” in Octopath Traveler like her adoptive sister does?

Lonato: Rhea is an infidel who has deceived the people and desecrated the goddess! We have virtue and the goddess herself on our side!

Oh. So he's part of the Western Church. The people who are right about Rhea for entirely the wrong reasons.

Ashe: Even if that's all true, dragging the townsfolk into it like this isn't right!

...Is he talking about the militiamen? Because the game made it very clear that everyone fighting is completely on board with Lonato's cause. He's not really “dragging” anyone into it.

This was a really disappointing conversation. This was our one chance to get a show-don't-tell look into their relationship, and I can barely even tell they're father and son. There's no regret or despair in Lonato's voice, no realization that he fucked up royally by sending his son to the church that killed his first son... nothing.

And then a few curved shots, spells and a Professr wrath strike later, he's down.

We get a secret book and goddess icon, which is really disappointing. Especially since they didn't buff the stat boost of secret books to accommodate for its stat being nerfed further still, like they've come to do with, say, luck.

Really, skill gets a bad rap in damned near every game it's in. I have two ideas on how to to change it:

The first is to, in addition to buffing the impact a point of skill has on your hit rate, replace criticals with a series of weapon-dependent special effects that only activate if your skill exceeds the enemy's luck (renamed bravery in my game concepts) by a certain threshold. That way a single point of skill has a way higher tangible impact on your unit's performance, like with speed.

The second, far simpler solution, the one I'm actually using in the game I'm working on so I don't bite off more than I can chew, is to bring back the concept of the weapon level stat, except don't use the weapon level stat, just make it use your skill. Same result: suddenly skill has tangible thresholds a single point can help you reach.

Anyway, time to wrap up the story for this chapter and thus position myself for fast-forwarding through the next month tomorrow.

Ashe is completely broken up about killing everyone in the village when they were all so nice to him when Lonato took him in. They, uh... really could've done more with this before this moment, y'know. Maybe giving him a sequence talking to one of them? Or maybe explaining more about why he's fighting them and isn't sitting it out? Does he feel it's his duty? Has the Church forced him to?

Dimitri: Please, don't beat yourself up, Ashe. We did what had to be done.

...That almost feels like the infamous Shin Megami Tensei Law Hero's “Try not to feel too bad” line to me.

Yeah, and now Ashe goes offscreen, to talk to the characters this game didn't have the budget to show, in a location the game didn't have a budget to show. And as soon as he's gone, Dimitri talks about his own hangups with what he just did, and frankly it's ridiculous that there wasn't any audible concern from anyone but Ashe about the prospect of fighting their own countrymen before we actually got here.

Professr says this is the “reality of war”, because Professr didn't pick the house that grants her the mental capacity to disagree with anything the Church does and thus both of her options for what to say were basically “it had to be done”. And Dimitri flips the fuck out because those were civilians, not soldiers, and saying they should have found another way, and like... again, why didn't any of this come up sooner?

And they just happened to find a note on Lord Lonato from someone talking about a plan to assassinate Rhea. Now, the sad thing is that this is actually reasonably clever writing... except it's, at this moment, completely indistinguishable from the general character stupidity that surrounds it in this game.

Lord Lonato brought that note with him to this fight, apparently completely oblivious to what would happen as a result if he died. Yeah, sounds like the kind of stupid plot contrivance that would be par for the course in this game, such that I initially mistook it for such just now before I remembered the plot of the next chapter.

Lord Lonato did that on purpose. As a backup plan in case he died.

Because it's a trap.

They want Garreg Mach to focus all of their defensive efforts protecting Rhea so that their actual target, the crypt below the Monastery, is left far less guarded than it otherwise would be.

So it's actually kinda tragic that this isn't the sort of thing where you can trust that the game's planning something you don't immediately know about whenever the game doesn't make sense, because this game just routinely doesn't make sense in very, very similar ways to this.

...Jesus Christ, for whatever fucking reason, I failed to pick up on just how blatantly creepy Rhea is on my first playthrough. I also managed to somehow fail to pick up on various obvious hints about Edelgard that I wound up noticing like a blowtorch in a dark room when I played Black Eagles again for Silver Snow a while back. Like, I just got the sense Rhea was vaguely off-putting my first time around, but now it's like every fucking thing she says and does is so obviously sinister, creepy and vile. I genuinely don't know what the fuck was going on. Was it stress from ironmanning a game that hates the concept? If not, I don't know what the fuck made me that oblivious the first playthrough, and I'm starting to think that the “I am so fucking lost” feeling in Crimson Flower won't be there nearly as much if I replayed it.

But at any rate, that's it for today. Tomorrow we'll start on Chapter 4.

Stay safe, everyone!

[Samz707]

Yeah the crest descriptions are awful.

I've said before but I hate any "additional" RNG generally and the crests would be a big example if 3H wasn't relatively easy.  (at least compared to Awakening, where Dual Strike is actually the cause of most of my early game deaths on several playthroughs, while I haven't had a badly-timed crest activation kill me, yet.)

HIDDEN extra RNG even more so, I'd rather have a strategy game flesh itself out with non-random elements. (Such as Light Runes and Mines.) than "Hey, let's stick on even more randomness the player needs to keep track of!" or at the very least, keep it to "Objective" player bonuses, getting some health back/preserving weapon uses doesn't screw me over, while any sort of extra damage very much can result in suffering from success. (I honestly prefer how Heroes does it since at least there I can actually time/plan out when my ability activates for extra damage.)

Yeah I dislike Rhea being so obviously evil, if I at least had the option to have Byleth recognize and be unnerved by this, I wouldn't mind but the plot, as it does on several occasions, seems to think that having a feared legendary mercenary display intelligence lower than any other FE Lord, including admittingly trained villagers is reasonable, somehow.  (And for an avatar, it creates a big disconnect when my Avatar likes/isn't creeped out by someone who very much annoys me or creeps me out, use those dialogue prompts for something as simple as letting us decide how Byleth reacts to something please IS that's kinda the point of having them generally.)

I saved after the creepy scene where she has you on her lap later on and It wouldn't surprise me if the game has Byleth just brush that off rather than being incredibly creeped out. 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Samz707

[Jotari]

On 8/16/2021 at 5:35 PM, Alastor15243 said:

...Honestly, if characters were more selective about who they could join, I'd believe Sylvain could still be recruited to the Empire.

 

Sylvain would actually make a tonne of sense as a Black Eagles character to begin with.

On 8/16/2021 at 10:10 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

If you go down to Abyss, there's an additional loading bar. Also, when you come back from Abyss (even if you're ending your day off). This game is, uh, not optimized. 

I didn't think loading would be much of an issue in 2019. Loading feels like a feature from two generations back. Most loading screens nowadays are a handful of seconds long. I'm pretty sure even the likes of Xenoblade games with their massive area maps loads things quicker than Three Houses.

[Alastor15243]

12 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I didn't think loading would be much of an issue in 2019. Loading feels like a feature from two generations back. Most loading screens nowadays are a handful of seconds long. I'm pretty sure even the likes of Xenoblade games with their massive area maps loads things quicker than Three Houses.

I played the 3DS version and I don't remember it even having loading screens.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Three Houses Day 11: Fog of Bore

So before we start with this fight, can I just say how weird it is that no discussion whatsoever has been made about how the rest of the Kingdom is reacting to this? The Church isn't requesting/“requesting” assistance, and there's no talk about the Kingdom demanding the Church let them handle it rather than sending armed forces into their sovereign territory?

Also, the Church's physical territory seems pretty tiny. How exactly do they secure their authority? Is there just a ton of religious fanaticism, so they don't need large numbers to make everyone else do as they say? But it still doesn't feel like the Church should have all that impressive of a military compared to literally any other Fodlan territory.

 

Yeah this seems to be a hallmark of "We need the player character to do everything" syndrome. This should really  be the Kingdom's responsibility to subdue. Though I guess Lonato is specifically rebelling against the church, so maybe the Kingdom is taking a stance of "Him and his heretical actions are between him and his fate, leave the rest of us out of it. You can kill him if you want, just don't involve us".

Quote

Alright, so, we get to our first fog of war map of the game. Yes, this game brings that back in full force when it only properly appeared in one game in the previous 10 years.

Surprisingly, of all of the absolutely infuriating things this game does to screw with blind players... I don't remember a single one of them that had to do with Fog of War. I was terrified the whole time during my Crimson Flower blind ironman's fog of war chapters, but nothing ever actually happened, or threatened to happen. I was just uncomfortable at not being able to see what was around me.

I think it's used reaosnably well in Ashe's paralogue where you're defending Rhea. Enemies approach from three specific areas until the end of the map, or if you're willing to race out into the fog, until you kill the bosses. It works to make a defense map that you'd be hesitant to just blitzkrieg, but also one that doesn't overwhelm you with numbers, leaving you to cautiously consider your defensive formations and the cost of heading out. Divine Pulse as a mechanic also synergizes well with fog of war, as you can actively use divine pulse charges to journey into the fog and better grasp the situation. Though I suppose we could just say torches do that all the same.

I don't really like how it's used her in the sense that they just decide to abandon it half way through. I don't think much of the map would have even changed if they'd left it in until the end. Stumbling onto Lonato might have even provided for a nice surprise. It's like they wanted to bring back fog of war, but then got afraid of actually implementing it.

Quote

 

 

1: Apparently she got the Red Baron monicker “Thunderstrike” before she joined the church and got the actual Thunderbrand? Bit of an odd coincidence there. Unless she was given that name after joining the church by people who refuse to dignify her new name of Catherine? ...Or wait, did she have the thing all along and bring it with her upon defecting to the Church?

 

Given she has the crest to use it, I'm guessing yes, it's a family heirloom that she took with her. Though there's so much lore in this game (and not really in a good way) you can never be sure of anything.

Quote

Dimitri finally speaking up and commenting on the dying rebels makes me realize that he really should've had a moment where, I dunno, he tries to convince them to back down, or order them as crown prince? It's weird he's just silently working in the capacity of an extension of the church's power to suppress a rebellion in his own fucking country. That is such a comically petty and grotesque assertion of dominance and authority on Rhea's part that it's almost on the level of prima nocta.

 

I'd say the lack of individual action on Dimitri's part here comes down to the fact that it was a scenario written to be the same for all three lords. At least they threw Ashe a bone and gave him some lines, even if his whole existence and relation to Lonato raises far more questions than anything else.

Quote

...Jesus Christ, for whatever fucking reason, I failed to pick up on just how blatantly creepy Rhea is on my first playthrough. I also managed to somehow fail to pick up on various obvious hints about Edelgard that I wound up noticing like a blowtorch in a dark room when I played Black Eagles again for Silver Snow a while back. Like, I just got the sense Rhea was vaguely off-putting my first time around, but now it's like every fucking thing she says and does is so obviously sinister, creepy and vile. I genuinely don't know what the fuck was going on. Was it stress from ironmanning a game that hates the concept? If not, I don't know what the fuck made me that oblivious the first playthrough, and I'm starting to think that the “I am so fucking lost” feeling in Crimson Flower won't be there nearly as much if I replayed it.

Did you play Black Eagles first and not notice Edelgard was the Flame Emperor? Because their method of foreshadowing that reveal verges on to the absolute absurd. Especially after the remire battle where a characters shows up and essentially says "Huh, I wonder where Edelgard is. Oh look, it's the Flame Emperor." Meanwhile if you're playing Verdant Wind first it just lacks foreshadowing entirely and comes completely out of nowhere because Edelgard as a character just doesn't exist until she rebels.

21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I played the 3DS version and I don't remember it even having loading screens.

The original Xenoblade definitely did have loading screens (not sure about the 3DS version), it's black screen with light flowing around in the bottom right corner making the shape of the Monado.

I found a picture. The thing is it only lasts like three or four seconds while a Three Houses loading screen can easily be five times that. And Xenoblade came out almost a full 10 years earlier. I think the issue of Three House's loading screen is less one of necessity and more one of talent.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Jotari

[Samz707]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Did you play Black Eagles first and not notice Edelgard was the Flame Emperor? Because their method of foreshadowing that reveal verges on to the absolute absurd. Especially after the remire battle where a characters shows up and essentially says "Huh, I wonder where Edelgard is. Oh look, it's the Flame Emperor." Meanwhile if you're playing Verdant Wind first it just lacks foreshadowing entirely and comes completely out of nowhere because Edelgard as a character just doesn't exist until she rebels.

Honestly the foreshadowing for Rhea is...bad.

I literally thought we were ment to know it was her in the prologue, I didn't even recognize it as a "twist" until I saw people meming it on shitpost emblem. (AND OF COURSE BYLETH CAN'T MENTION THE VISION TO ANYONE BECAUSE BYLETH HAS THE IQ OF THE AMOUNT OF MINES IN FE7 which just occurred to me just now, so why even have it be an in-universe Byleth vision if it means as little as that one guy who betrays you in Awakening early on, it just makes Byleth look even more bloody stupid for seemingly never questioning Rhea.)

 

 

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Samz707 said:

Honestly the foreshadowing for Rhea is...bad.

I literally thought we were ment to know it was her in the prologue, I didn't even recognize it as a "twist" until I saw people meming it on shitpost emblem. (AND OF COURSE BYLETH CAN'T MENTION THE VISION TO ANYONE BECAUSE BYLETH HAS THE IQ OF THE AMOUNT OF MINES IN FE7 which just occurred to me just now, so why even have it be an in-universe Byleth vision if it means as little as that one guy who betrays you in Awakening early on, it just makes Byleth look even more bloody stupid for seemingly never questioning Rhea.)

 

 

I wouldn't even call it foreshadowing for Rhea as there's no reveal so to speak. Rhea is who she is from the outset and you just slowly grow to understand what that entails as the game goes on. Even from the first few chapters she's pulling the occasional psycho face when talking about traitors. There's no real secret aspect to Rhea, just a pretty dress. Well unless one wants to consider the secrets about Byleth's creation, which a lot of people don't seem to focus in on when criticizing Rhea as a person even though  it's pretty messed up.

[Alastor15243]

18 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Did you play Black Eagles first and not notice Edelgard was the Flame Emperor? Because their method of foreshadowing that reveal verges on to the absolute absurd.

I knew it was Edelgard from the moment she opened her mouth. Women using voice deepeners do not remotely sound like men. But beyond that I had some really weird theories about what was going on, involving time travel. I thought Flame Emperor and Death Knight were Edelgard and Dimitri from the future. Mostly because I expected them to actually make Byleth's time powers plot relevant since they insisted on making them canon.

[Jotari]

3 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I knew it was Edelgard from the moment she opened her mouth. Women using voice deepeners do not remotely sound like men. But beyond that I had some really weird theories about what was going on, involving time travel. I thought Flame Emperor and Death Knight were Edelgard and Dimitri from the future. Mostly because I expected them to actually make Byleth's time powers plot relevant since they insisted on making them canon.

Ah yes, I remember you mentioning that during the scene where the Flame Emperor first shows up. Where she in her terrorist disguise talkes to Thales in his civilian disguise. As if Edelgard talking to her own uncle would have been massively more suspicious than Arundel talking to a terrorist (I say terrorists lightly though as Edelgard as the Flame Emperor never actually does shit to justify the existence of the disguise).

[Samz707]

16 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I knew it was Edelgard from the moment she opened her mouth. Women using voice deepeners do not remotely sound like men. But beyond that I had some really weird theories about what was going on, involving time travel. I thought Flame Emperor and Death Knight were Edelgard and Dimitri from the future. Mostly because I expected them to actually make Byleth's time powers plot relevant since they insisted on making them canon.

Probably would have been too interesting.

Now I wonder if someone's going to steal that and turn into a fanfic.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Samz707

[Jotari]

16 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Probably would have been too interesting.

Now I wonder if someone's going to steal that and turn into a fanfic.

Eh, they managed to do time travel in Awakening and fail to do anything interesting with it.

[Samz707]

12 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Eh, they managed to do time travel in Awakening and fail to do anything interesting with it.

Time Travel that (As far as I'm aware) they literally had to retcon to dimension/timeline hopping because it still didn't make sense. (Since I'm pretty sure there's no hints towards that in the base game from what I've seen and the game literally gives the females who can have kids plot-armor as if it was regular time travel.)

I am glad 3H brought back Ballista as well as the Catapult thing that launches rocks, sniping dudes from the otherside of the map is fun. 

Since it's as good time as any, what's everyone's opinion on Gauntlets? (I Kinda like the punching but they honestly seem OP so far and a friend of mine who's interested in ye olde weaponry says they look more like fancy gladiator stuff than anything actual soldiers would use.)

Edited August 17, 2021 by Samz707

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Samz707 said:

Since it's as good time as any, what's everyone's opinion on Gauntlets? (I Kinda like the punching but they honestly seem OP so far.)

Interesting concept for a weapon, though I've yet to be able to get a speedy user of it. I think that's what I'm gonna do with Felix, that should be interesting.

[Samz707]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Interesting concept for a weapon, though I've yet to be able to get a speedy user of it. I think that's what I'm gonna do with Felix, that should be interesting.

Yeah Felix is pretty good with them so far in my experience.

Caspar isn't half-bad either and I'm considering making Bernadetta a user of them, because why not and she already does some (Off-screen, of course because the budget for this game was blown on the Maid DLC Outfits) punching/disarming in her supports.

They do make me kinda realize why most FE games don't give you many weapons with brave effects as they're kinda powerful but also aren't heavy so they don't negatively effect dodge. (I can only imagine the chaos if Killer Gauntlets existed.)

Edited August 17, 2021 by Samz707