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

[Shadow Mir]

On 9/24/2021 at 10:09 AM, Alastor15243 said:

...Shit, I should've checked if I could've gotten one of those sickles. FUCK. And now I can't even divine pulse back.

You'll get another chance to get one before part 1 is over.

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 36: Chapter 9 Weeks 1 and 2

Alright, back to the grind. I just finished up a little over an hour of the start of the month, so here are my notes I quickly jotted down:

“Legend says the goddess prays for peace from her home in the heavens”

The actual fuck is a goddess doing praying?

Our job this month is to guard the chapel and investigate the intruders who were apparently sighted there, which... uh... do we do that literally at all?

Jeralt will join us to assist... once he's finished with his separate mission. Meaning the soldier Rhea assigned to assist us... literally can't assist us in our ostensibly month-long task until the final day, which is conveniently when shit hits the fan. Goodie!

Four red flower seeds seem to be a 3 stalk winner after cultivation, better keep that in mind.

The game tries to use a little Remire orphan girl to make me feel bad about not being there sooner when that was entirely the fault of the game's contrived writing trying to fit a square story into a round game.

The game also throws three silver battalions my way just for saving this lady a walk to the church. DLC stuff to cram DLC noble houses into the battalion catalogue. I hate when games have an attitude of having DLC just mean “free shit” without balancing it gameplaywise. And to make things more ridiculous, the thing I need to go to the church to grab is right next to the fast-travel spawn point.

Another fun dumb thing I noticed about the Monastery: your shadow is always based on the position of the sun. Always. Even when you're indoors. And in one instance I found, that shadow was still visible even when I was standing in the shade of a building.

Ah yes, the White Heron Cup. Still not sure who to pick. Probably one of my magic users, but I want most of those to become dark fliers. ...I dunno, Mercedes might work, but not getting the doubled magic charges would be a pity...

Ah yes, also, I gave Shamir her Monastery outfit, finally. I really like her character design, incidentally. It's kinda crazy how hot her outfit it is despite it showing basically no skin.

And I have seven fucking paralogues now. Christ.

Alright, I just made Felix a bandit, so I'm gonna train him in that to get death blow. Meanwhile, Flayn has darting blow, but she can't pass the mage test this week so I'm putting her in priest for now. That darting blow is making a huge difference, holy shit.

...Alright. That's all the notes I had over the course of exploring on week one and doing the Felix battle quest for the first half of week 2. Now then... on to the second battle of week 2... the Sothis paralogue I'm about to run out of time on.

...Honestly, the next week or two of entries might be a non-stop marathon of paralogues just to get them out of the way. I might not even devote full write-ups to them, because holy shit are there a lot of them and a lot of them don't have much time left.

This paralogue came very close to kicking my ass first time I played it during my blind ironman. Every turn was a frantic struggle to work out how to do as much damage as I possibly could in a single turn. I've gotten increasingly better at it since then, and I'm pretty sure this is later than I normally do it, so we should be fine. Let's go.

One of my main priorities is to train anyone working for a blow skill, and get my mage girls, as many as I can, up to level 20 for dark flier.

Okay, seriously, what the actual fuck.

So last time they wanted a story scene with enemies showing up in the middle of it, they showed you the prep map without the enemies. But apparently that's not even a limitation of their shitty engine, because on this map, they do show you the enemies you'll be fighting, and then have them vanish so they can appear again in the cutscene. Why the flaming fuck did the Ingrid and Dorothea paralogue not do that, exactly?

So, I restarted to buy a hand axe for Dedue to help fend off the beasts to the rear and buy my army some time, only to discover that the “you can't skip this scene because there's a decision you have to make at the end”... also applies to the cutscenes after said decision.

This game is just a mess in so many just-barely-conspicuous ways. It's like every half hour I'm discovering some new way the game falls below the franchise's previous standards of polish.

Man, it was really frustrating not knowing in my first playthrough that you could get tons of ore by breaking all the shields on a monster.

Just about finishing up now. Annette just learned fiendish blow, which is awesome, and Dedue's been handling all of the southern monsters single-handedly, save for some healing from Mercedes from across the map. Also awesome.

...Uh...

...The chest on this map is... refilled.

...Someone...

...canonically...

...came back here...

...and left something behind in the chest.

...A knowledge gem. Okay, that shit's seeing some serious use. I'm so glad I noticed that in time.

...So, fun fact, another weird glitch... whenever a character goes “dot dot dot” in the text boxes... and thus has no voice line... uh... the previous line doesn't stop playing.

...Alright, finished. We get one more divine pulse charge, and... a single piece of umbral steel, which is pretty weak, given that's the absolute minimum you can get from breaking a demonic beast's shields. ...A minimum I did get, incidentally, with the boss.

Alright, time for tutoring and that'll be it for today.

Aaaaand Shamir support.

...It's odd for her to say “maybe we'll end up working together”... when we're already working together.

...Alright, tomorrow's gonna be a Monastery visit so I can replenish everyone's motivation and pick a White Heron cup participant, and then I'll do supports. Then it'll be time for the chapter battle the day after.

...Which I am decidedly going to have shit to say about.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah yes, the White Heron Cup. Still not sure who to pick. Probably one of my magic users, but I want most of those to become dark fliers. ...I dunno, Mercedes might work, but not getting the doubled magic charges would be a pity...

 

Keep in mind you can forgo actually using a dancer at all and just win the Heron Cup to get that sweet Sword Avoid+20 on one of your combat units.

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And I have seven fucking paralogues now. Christ.

I think I did suggest you do two in one weekend instead of one and a skirmish a few updates back. Paralogues can pile up if you're not making your way through them.

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

This paralogue came very close to kicking my ass first time I played it during my blind ironman. Every turn was a frantic struggle to work out how to do as much damage as I possibly could in a single turn. I've gotten increasingly better at it since then, and I'm pretty sure this is later than I normally do it, so we should be fine. Let's go.

I actually really like this paralogue. Much mroe than the actual gameplay chapter you're about to do which is also entirely monsters. The lay out for the level and the constant reinforcements makes for a nice challenge. You have to be pretty careful with how you use your gambits and archers to maximize damage each turn. Getting that chest also isn't easy, provided you choose to have your army retreat to Byleth's position...I've never actually considered just rushing the boss with the main army.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

17 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Uh...

...The chest on this map is... refilled.

...Someone...

...canonically...

...came back here...

...and left something behind in the chest.

Is it really the exact same speck of land story-wise, or is it purely gameplay laziness resulting in map recycling? I'd rather believe the latter, than think Anti-Thieves are a thing.

[Alastor15243]

14 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Is it really the exact same speck of land story-wise, or is it purely gameplay laziness resulting in map recycling? I'd rather believe the latter, than think Anti-Thieves are a thing.

The map is Sothis and Professr returning to the red canyon, so uh... plausible deniability's pretty low there.

[lenticular]

25 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Alright, finished. We get one more divine pulse charge, and... a single piece of umbral steel, which is pretty weak, given that's the absolute minimum you can get from breaking a demonic beast's shields. ...A minimum I did get, incidentally, with the boss.

I always think of the knowledge gem as being the main reward for that paralogue. The secondary reward is the wootz steel from breaking the wolves' armour. The stuff that the game actually gives you as a reward is also a thing that exists, I guess. This is less than ideal.

I do like the paralogue, though. It can be a fun challenge. Especially since there's the constant trade-off of "do I try to strip the armour on everything for ore, or do I want to just unload all my damage into a single tile to kill it as quickly as I possibly can?" It's a neat little risk/reward dynamic.

[Alastor15243]

Yeah, I definitely agree this is some of the more interesting gameplay the game has to offer. It was pretty memorable and intense my first time around, memorably more so than most of what surrounded it. Even knowing what I now know about monsters wasn't enough to make it completely mindless.

[Interdimensional Observer]

12 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

The map is Sothis and Professr returning to the red canyon, so uh... plausible deniability's pretty low there.

I'll try to come up with deniability by asking "how large is the largest canyon on Earth that isn't underwater?" and "Does 3H specify how large the Red Canyon is?". And not answering those questions, I'll say without hard evidence that there is enough room for two sets of chest-having ruins set in two different battlefield sites.😅

[Shadow Mir]

I did some poking around, and supposedly, Valla was based on the Loulan Kingdom, and the curse of Valla is a twisted version of the fact that in real life, no one talks much about said kingdom anymore. For more, check this out:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/i6hslx/worldbuilding_in_fe_fates_valla_and_its_chinese/

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, tomorrow's gonna be a Monastery visit so I can replenish everyone's motivation and pick a White Heron cup participant

Who are you considering?

EDIT: What is your opinion of rallies in this game? Because a thread on the 3H board recently cropped up talking about how useful rallies are, and the general consensus is that they're significantly less useful in this game.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

EDIT: What is your opinion of rallies in this game? Because a thread on the 3H board recently cropped up talking about how useful rallies are, and the general consensus is that they're significantly less useful in this game.

Limiting their range to only usable on one person, and making all of the rallies personal and thus way harder to stack, pretty much cripples them for me. They're only useful when preparing for enemy-phase, like when I stopped Sylvain from being doubled today when baiting in a bird.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And I have seven fucking paralogues now. Christ.

Chapters 7 through 11 are Paralogue city, to a fault. I really wish they'd moved some of them to earlier pre-skip, or else post-skip.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Legend says the goddess prays for peace from her home in the heavens”

The actual fuck is a goddess doing praying?

Makes me think back to this episode of 30 Rock.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

..Alright, finished. We get one more divine pulse charge, and... a single piece of umbral steel, which is pretty weak, given that's the absolute minimum you can get from breaking a demonic beast's shields. ...A minimum I did get, incidentally, with the boss.

The game seems to think that Umbral Steel is less common than it is, and that Agarthium and Mythril are more common than they are. I have no idea how I'm supposed to forge an Archanean legendary weapon without buying from the online travelers.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah yes, the White Heron Cup. Still not sure who to pick. Probably one of my magic users, but I want most of those to become dark fliers. ...I dunno, Mercedes might work, but not getting the doubled magic charges would be a pity...

I've always wanted to do Dancer Dimitri. Sword Avoid +20 synergizes excellently with his Avoid-boosting personal and his Sword boon, while Battalion Wrath/Vantage means he doesn't even need player-phase offense to be a serious threat on enemy phase. That said, if you're planning on using him as a Wyvern, he's probably not the best choice.

How about Ashe? I know you were planning to abandon him, but he's a forced-deploy in chapter 13, and he shows up fairly early. Plus he can keep providing linked attack support to his Blue Lion allies, say with a Longbow or Levin Sword+.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Uh...

...The chest on this map is... refilled.

...Someone...

...canonically...

...came back here...

...and left something behind in the chest.

...A knowledge gem. Okay, that shit's seeing some serious use. I'm so glad I noticed that in time.

Maybe the knowledge gem was there the first time, and whoever cracked the chest just didn't notice it beneath whatever else was there? Then a, uh, gust of wind blew the lid shut again.

[Eltosian Kadath]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

The game also throws three silver battalions my way just for saving this lady a walk to the church. DLC stuff to cram DLC noble houses into the battalion catalogue. I hate when games have an attitude of having DLC just mean “free shit” without balancing it gameplaywise. And to make things more ridiculous, the thing I need to go to the church to grab is right next to the fast-travel spawn point.

Could be worse, a lot of games don't even bother to sprinkle those bonuses throughout the game, and just give you them all at the start for nothing. Admittedly the issue of DLC/preorder bonuses ruining a game's balance is an under-discussed topic, and as someone that generally doesn't buy DLCs I am not the best person to comment on the trend...

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

So last time they wanted a story scene with enemies showing up in the middle of it, they showed you the prep map without the enemies. But apparently that's not even a limitation of their shitty engine, because on this map, they do show you the enemies you'll be fighting, and then have them vanish so they can appear again in the cutscene. Why the flaming fuck did the Ingrid and Dorothea paralogue not do that, exactly?

Having this arbitrary inconsistency pointed out makes it kinda annoys me.

[lenticular]

5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Could be worse, a lot of games don't even bother to sprinkle those bonuses throughout the game, and just give you them all at the start for nothing. Admittedly the issue of DLC/preorder bonuses ruining a game's balance is an under-discussed topic, and as someone that generally doesn't buy DLCs I am not the best person to comment on the trend...

I think that Three Houses is not too bad when it comes to DLC balance. Not great, but definitely could be worse. There is some random over-powered nonsense that you get at the start of the game for doing absolutely nothing, but it is mercifully segregated from everything else and very easy to just completely ignore if you don't want to break the game. (It is all literally in a box under your bed.)

Then there's all the random extra monastery quests that get sprinkled throughout the game, like the one Alastor mentioned. These are power-creep, but I find them too minor to really care about. Most of them just give a few gift items and a bit of renown or something like that, which is definitely stronger than not having them, but is such a small thing that I don't think it's particularly felt either way. There is the one Alastor just did that gives three battalions, but they're all pretty bad and mostly exist for people who miss the trope and aesthetic of maid and butler from Fates.

One thing that I do think is pretty broken is the ability to get stat boosters from auxiliary battles. That isn't as in-your-face busted as the stat boosters you find under your bed, but it can really add up over the course of a game. It's still possible to completely ignore it if you choose to, but it does much more to remind you of its existence at every turn.

All of which is varying from bad to tolerable, but then there's the last part which is actually good, and is why I'm reasonably upbeat about Three Houses DLC in general. Namely that the units and classes of the DLC (aka, the parts I actually care about) are decently balanced. The units are all good but not great and are fun to use without outshining everyone else. (Except for Anna, who is pretty awful.) The classes are all valid options that have their own specific niche and strengths, but without being so powerful that you have to choose them.

[Jotari]

Personally I find the DLC paralogues, despite the overpowered things it gives you, to be needlessly difficult. Or rather, difficult in a way I don't find particularly fun. One of them is an npc protection mission which basically requires warp or stride to even attempt since the guy you're protecting will die on like turn 2 without your help and he starts on the other side of the map. The other mission is better, but it still splits your army up which is quite annoying if you're not actually using the forced deploy characters makes it difficult to protect them. There's also more than a few ambush spawns and triowire reinforcements.  Maybe if it were on an original map I'd be more forgiving,  but I just play it thinking  "I prefer Enbarr when I'm not playing it this way". I also think they'd be more palatable if they were in Part 2 instead of Part 1 when you have more tools to deal with such problems. And just to add insult to injury, it's out of canon with Cindered Shadows since Balthus and Yuri already have their relics there. I know it's be kind of broken to have them arrive with their relics as soon as you recruit them...But the game kind of already does that with Catherine. And they could have maintained continuity by only having them be recruitable a little later in the game after the Cindered Shadows stuff happens. I think i would preferred if Yuri and Balthus had their relics from the start and the new paralogues were shifted to part 2 and gave Constance and Hapi relics.

[Anathaco]

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

One thing that I do think is pretty broken is the ability to get stat boosters from auxiliary battles. That isn't as in-your-face busted as the stat boosters you find under your bed, but it can really add up over the course of a game. It's still possible to completely ignore it if you choose to, but it does much more to remind you of its existence at every turn.

At the very least they lock the strength, magic and speed boosters to the maps that don’t unlock until part 2, but you can use them to stack defence on a unit or two, for example. But yeah, overall a method of getting heaps of stat boosters like that is pretty busted.

[lenticular]

26 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Personally I find the DLC paralogues, despite the overpowered things it gives you, to be needlessly difficult. Or rather, difficult in a way I don't find particularly fun. One of them is an npc protection mission which basically requires warp or stride to even attempt since the guy you're protecting will die on like turn 2 without your help and he starts on the other side of the map. The other mission is better, but it still splits your army up which is quite annoying if you're not actually using the forced deploy characters makes it difficult to protect them. There's also more than a few ambush spawns and triowire reinforcements.  Maybe if it were on an original map I'd be more forgiving,  but I just play it thinking  "I prefer Enbarr when I'm not playing it this way". I also think they'd be more palatable if they were in Part 2 instead of Part 1 when you have more tools to deal with such problems. And just to add insult to injury, it's out of canon with Cindered Shadows since Balthus and Yuri already have their relics there. I know it's be kind of broken to have them arrive with their relics as soon as you recruit them...But the game kind of already does that with Catherine. And they could have maintained continuity by only having them be recruitable a little later in the game after the Cindered Shadows stuff happens. I think i would preferred if Yuri and Balthus had their relics from the start and the new paralogues were shifted to part 2 and gave Constance and Hapi relics.

One way to get their recruitment pushed back a little later would be to just give them the same sort of recruitment requirements as other units rather than making them free to recruit. In which case, sure, you would be able to grab them (and potentially their relics) very early on if you chose to, but only at a fairly significant opportunity cost.

I will say, though, that I actually quite like the Yuri+Constance paralogue, and haven't found it as bad as you have. Duke Gerth is robust enough to survive a hit, even on Maddening, and I've not had any problem getting to him on time if I beeline towards him with two or three fliers. The Balthus+Hapi paralogue, on the other hand, I don't care for at all. It's not so much that I find it especially hard as that it drags on too long and seriously outstays its welcome.

11 minutes ago, Anathaco said:

At the very least they lock the strength, magic and speed boosters to the maps that don’t unlock until part 2, but you can use them to stack defence on a unit or two, for example. But yeah, overall a method of getting heaps of stat boosters like that is pretty busted.

I've never paid enough attention to notice this. Does the same restriction to which stat boosters you get apply to Anna's quests to get secrets, or only to the ones that drop directly from the yellow exclamation mark auxiliary battles?

[Alastor15243]

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

I think that Three Houses is not too bad when it comes to DLC balance. Not great, but definitely could be worse. There is some random over-powered nonsense that you get at the start of the game for doing absolutely nothing, but it is mercifully segregated from everything else and very easy to just completely ignore if you don't want to break the game.

That's precisely my problem though. Instead of making it something you earn and thus can use guilt-free even when challenging yourself, some more recent FE games have treated so many of the fun DLC toys as basically a "make the game easier for free" button.

[lenticular]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

That's precisely my problem though. Instead of making it something you earn and thus can use guilt-free even when challenging yourself, some more recent FE games have treated so many of the fun DLC toys as basically a "make the game easier for free" button.

Yes, and that's exactly the sort of DLC that I'm most interested in as well. But let's be honest, there will always be DLC that is just raw powercreep because that stuff sells. You might not want it and I might not want it, but there are enough people out there who love that sort of stuff and I'm not about to tell them that they're having fun wrong. I would prefer if all of the DLC was stuff that I was interested in, but if I can't have that then I'm fine with DLC that I can easily ignore. Like, imagine that instead of being in a box under your bed, the stat boosters just start off in your inventory. If you wanted to ignore them then you'd have to scroll past them every time you were doing inventory management, you'd have to remember which ones were from the DLC and be careful not to use them. It would suck. It would actively make the game worse. Stat boosters under the bed don't have that problem. They don't improve the game for me, but they don't make the game any worse for me either. And given that they do improve the game for some people, I have no problem with them existing.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

One way to get their recruitment pushed back a little later would be to just give them the same sort of recruitment requirements as other units rather than making them free to recruit. In which case, sure, you would be able to grab them (and potentially their relics) very early on if you chose to, but only at a fairly significant opportunity cost.

I will say, though, that I actually quite like the Yuri+Constance paralogue, and haven't found it as bad as you have. Duke Gerth is robust enough to survive a hit, even on Maddening, and I've not had any problem getting to him on time if I beeline towards him with two or three fliers. The Balthus+Hapi paralogue, on the other hand, I don't care for at all. It's not so much that I find it especially hard as that it drags on too long and seriously outstays its welcome.

I've never paid enough attention to notice this. Does the same restriction to which stat boosters you get apply to Anna's quests to get secrets, or only to the ones that drop directly from the yellow exclamation mark auxiliary battles?

Part of the issue is that when I attempt into just plain don't have enough fliers. Part of the reason I say it would have been better as a part 2 paralogue.

1 minute ago, lenticular said:

Yes, and that's exactly the sort of DLC that I'm most interested in as well. But let's be honest, there will always be DLC that is just raw powercreep because that stuff sells. You might not want it and I might not want it, but there are enough people out there who love that sort of stuff and I'm not about to tell them that they're having fun wrong. I would prefer if all of the DLC was stuff that I was interested in, but if I can't have that then I'm fine with DLC that I can easily ignore. Like, imagine that instead of being in a box under your bed, the stat boosters just start off in your inventory. If you wanted to ignore them then you'd have to scroll past them every time you were doing inventory management, you'd have to remember which ones were from the DLC and be careful not to use them. It would suck. It would actively make the game worse. Stat boosters under the bed don't have that problem. They don't improve the game for me, but they don't make the game any worse for me either. And given that they do improve the game for some people, I have no problem with them existing.

Honestly I'm fine with both kinds of DLC. The Chalice of Beginnings is broken, but fun. It can be fun to just break the game with stupid shit. But that being said, I like stuff that's a real challenge. Apotheosis is probably my favourite Fire Emblem DLC as it actually gave a playground to make proper use of all the broken shit innately in the game.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Jotari

[Anathaco]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I've never paid enough attention to notice this. Does the same restriction to which stat boosters you get apply to Anna's quests to get secrets, or only to the ones that drop directly from the yellow exclamation mark auxiliary battles?

Anna’s quests go in a set order and loop back around iirc. Since you can only do the quest once a month I guess they didn’t really bother limiting it. I don’t remember the order that the boosters are given to you, but I believe the ones for more important stats (aka the classic strength magic speed trinity) are given later in the chain, meaning you naturally get less of them even if you do the quest every single month (which is inpossible without NG+ I believe). But you can definitely get at least one of all of them pre skip.

But yeah, there are two aux battles that are only open post skip. One of them will give either strength or magic, and the other will either give speed or HP. HP best stat confirmed.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Anathaco

[Shadow Mir]

15 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Limiting their range to only usable on one person, and making all of the rallies personal and thus way harder to stack, pretty much cripples them for me. They're only useful when preparing for enemy-phase, like when I stopped Sylvain from being doubled today when baiting in a bird.

Yeah... it's a serious drop in terms of usefulness from Fates and Awakening, as often boosting one unit's stats doesn't really make much difference (sure, it might help a unit get a KO they might not have... but odds are, the same could have been accomplished by having that other unit do chip damage instead, and gain experience in the process). 

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 37: Chapter 9 Week 3

...Aaaaaaaaand apparently I missed the deadline for the White Heron cup, so... no dancer.

FUCK.

It's kind of annoying that you don't have the whole month to pick one. But man, I feel really frustrated now. Total pit in my stomach. I at least can take solace in the fact that I never settled on a truly satisfying choice for it, but even so, christ did that hurt to realize more than I thought it would.

Alright, time to get everyone's motivation back up.

Annette and Mercedes just had a meal together, and yeah, super awkward. It's hilarious how inconsistent they are about this.

Now then... on to supports.

Oh no, wait, ball time first.

Yet another group scene where everyone's line of dialogue is alarmingly predictable, though it gets slightly better once it gets past Dedue, Dimitri, Felix and Sylvain.

...Yeah, not sure if I've already said this, but the fact that the exact same story beats happen regardless of the house you pick... really cheapens the personalities of the three lords, who all make the same core decisions, at the same time, for the same reasons. Especially when it comes to this “let's all promise to meet again five years from now for the Millennium Festival” thing.

...In the dead silence of the start of the cutscene before the music starts... everyone's literally stock fucking still. Not a single bit of movement other than the camera panning, like it's panning across a still painting. Only for the music to bring everyone to life... in choppy framerate.

...I live in perpetual terror of what this game's runaway success could do to Intelligent System's quality control.

Real talk, this scene looks abysmal. I've seen RWBY scenes more lively and polished than this. Season one, non-fight-scene RWBY scenes.

Everything about this cutscene just feels lifeless and empty and awkward. The dancing, the camera shots, the framerate, the fact that everyone's dance partners are generic, that overhead shot of the dancing... woooow.

The one interesting thing is how close they get Dimitri and Edelgard to each other, basically back to back, like you get the impression they want to be dancing together, some sort of “so close and yet so far” thing. I mean that's kind of interesting symbolism.

...I can ask Dimitri if he's going to dance with Edelgard or Claude. The reaction to the latter would no doubt be hilarious, but I'm going with the former because I don't want to miss anything potentially important about his and Edelgard's past.

So apparently for one year, without knowing about their step-sibling status, they met in childhood and became incredibly close.

I correctly “guess” he gave Edelgard a dagger as a parting gift, and he's impressed, oblivious to the fact that I've been spying on everyone's social interactions.

So... he's just guessing Edelgard's forgotten him, and doesn't think it's worth it to reconnect at this stage when they're so different.

Alright, so, goddess tower. Let's see who I talk to...?

...After two comically long “non-loading-screen loading” black screens punctuating less than a second of Professr walking and stopping in surprise... I find Dedue waiting for me.

Dedue brings up the paopu-fruit-esque alleged properties of the goddess's tower. However, given that this game is not anywhere near on KH's level of homoeroticism, this game explicitly says it's only between a man and a woman, which is profoundly bizarre given that this game actually has gay relationships as a possibility, and the head of the land's religion is a bisexual shapeshifting lizard who would have no reason whatsoever to promote homophobia.

Also, they completely skip over even the romantic implications and have Professr's options either be “nothing” or “swear to uphold the peace in Fodlan”.

“If the cold is too much, I will lend you my coat”.

He says. To someone already wearing a much bigger and heavier coat.

Looks like I won't have time to do supports today, but I can at least finish this scene with spying on Rhea.

We get another song with badly-constructed lyrics...

...Which I have to hear and can't skip, begging the question of why there's even an option to press A on that dialogue box if you're still gonna freeze on this picture for fucking ages...

“If [I wrote this song], how could she be singing it?”

...What the fuck is Sothis talking about? Does she believe she's never existed as anything but a ghost or something? How would any song she wrote be impossible for her to sing?

...But that's all I have time for today.

See you tomorrow.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

26 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

So apparently for one year, without knowing about their step-sibling status, they met in childhood and became incredibly close.

I correctly “guess” he gave Edelgard a dagger as a parting gift, and he's impressed, oblivious to the fact that I've been spying on everyone's social interactions.

So... he's just guessing Edelgard's forgotten him, and doesn't think it's worth it to reconnect at this stage when they're so different.

Isn´t a big part of the monastery, the whole meet ´n greet with all the future big shots? If so what´s the thought process here?

"You know that girl, that you got real close to as a kid who also just so happens to be the next in line for one of the continents largest economic and military powers [I presume]? Yeah, let´s not talk to her beyond the bare minimum sass in mock battles"

All that, just so that he can get mad when Edelgard steals the stones?

 

Edit: I just noticed that the main lords don´t have supports with each other. 

Edited October 5, 2021 by Imuabicus

[Etrurian emperor]

43 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

“If the cold is too much, I will lend you my coat”.

He says. To someone already wearing a much bigger and heavier coat.

Yeah what other excuse could Dedue use to undress in front of his professor? I'm sure he'd suggest they'd cuddle next. To share body heat of course. And for no other reason.....

Dedue you naughty stud. 

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

 

 

...What the fuck is Sothis talking about? Does she believe she's never existed as anything but a ghost or something? How would any song she wrote be impossible for her to sing?

...But that's all I have time for today.

See you tomorrow.

Stay safe, everyone.

If So this doesn't know who she is then, yeah, that's a pretty distinct possibility for her...though not at this point since she just found out the goddess shares her name like last month.