Late to the FE party: Three Houses review [spoilers]

[FlamesOfRagnell]

My review of my second FE game. Like I've said before, I'm sure there are lots of people who post reviews on here, so I don't know if anyone will be interested in mine. Feel free to ignore if you don't care! Especially since this one turned out a lot longer than I planned...so be warned.

If you want to know what my scores mean:

Spoiler

• 1/10 - Basically no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Every attempt at creating an aspect of the game was a failure. I don't think I've ever given a game a 1/10, but they surely exist.
• 2/10 - A few aspects might have some amount of effort, but none of the elements of the game synergize together at all. It's slightly more respectable than a 1/10, but still borderline unplayable.
• 3/10 - There may be some potential. The developers' plan is there, and I can see it. But alas, any potential that might be there was wasted. So, the game is simply not enjoyable, even if it's not offensively horrid.
• 4/10 - There is structure and there is some competence putting the game together. However, it's just not well done. I may be rolling my eyes through much of it.
• 5/10 - The game is simply unremarkable. It's difficult to enjoy something where nothing particularly impresses in any way. I'd much rather play something that does! This rating may also be used in cases where the "good" of the game is counterbalanced by the "bad" of the game, creating a rather volatile experience. This can go for other ratings, too, but it can be especially apparent here.
• 6/10 - You can definitely get something out of playing the game. The good outweighs the bad, but there is too much holding it back from being very good.
• 7/10 - The game is definitely worth my time. It's a solid experience for sure. On the other hand, a 7/10 game is probably not going down in history as one of the greats, and I won't be thinking about it much when thinking of prime examples of impressive games.
• 8/10 - The game does a lot of great things. So much so that it leaves a particular impression, such that I'll surely be frequently thinking back on this game from the point of completion onward.
• 9/10 - Truly an amazing game. A game like this is a significant achievement. It will leave a distinguished mark on games, but there may be something holding it back from being a true masterpiece; something irking me a little too much to look past.
• 10/10 - Let's get this out of the way: perfect games don't exist. I doubt there is anything in this world that can be considered perfect. But I think even a masterpiece has its flaws (as minor as they might be). To me, a 10/10 game is one that is absolutely awe-inspiring. The game will be the highest standard for all games of its ilk to come. Every game of its type should be compared to it.

I'm not trying to be the arbiter of what games are good, or what objectively makes games good or not. It's simply my thought process for rating stuff. Of course, it's all just my opinion!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 8/10

Gameplay

Spoiler

• Three Houses had some nice quality of life features, such as showing which unit the enemy is going to target. I don't think things like this are "dumbing down" the game, as all it does it save you a lot of time boringly counting squares between you and the enemy.
• The UI/UX was similarly clean and easy to use. I only miss those satisfying menu SFX from Awakening....
• I'd say the layouts of many maps were an improvement coming from Awakening, but there were still a lot of open spaces. I suppose that is unavoidable when trying to make a large quantity of realistic war settings. There are just bound to be a lot of open spaces. However, they do remedy it somewhat with things like forest tiles and whatnot. Let me also clarify that I don't think open maps are inherently bad or unenjoyable, just that an overabundance of them is uninteresting.
• Reworking the weapon triangle was an interesting idea. I don't inherently prefer one system over the other. It seems a big part of the design philosophy of Three Houses was flexibility in gameplay, so relegating the weapon triangle to unit abilities lends itself well to that.
• The "flexibility design philosophy" goes a little too far in other places, though. Any unit can pretty much become any class. Obviously, units are still more suitable for a certain group of classes. Still though, even making it possible to do this made it so they had to design units to be much more similar to each other than they otherwise would be. In any case, I naturally gravitated to giving most units their "canon class", so to speak. But don't get me wrong, it's only a minor gripe. On a related note, it's weird and slightly disappointing how certain classes are just not in the game at all (even when considering the DLC). That, and certain Advanced classes don't have a directly related Master class associated with it, so you sometimes have to awkwardly sideline certain units into classes that you wouldn't otherwise give them. For example, what do you give Linhardt after Bishop? Holy Knight? I never trained him in lances or riding. Not that Holy Knight is more suitable for Linhardt, it's just that certain units having Advanced classes be their final class is a bit underwhelming, no matter how viable certain Advanced classes are through the late game.
• Battalions are awesome. They have several uses. Firstly--and this is more of a thematic thing--they make it more visually apparent that you are leading actual armies instead of just a group of 10-15 individuals. Secondly, they give you another option to navigate the map when stunning enemies; a patently good use of the "flexibility philosophy". Thirdly, they help you deal with situations where a unit becomes crowded with many enemies close together. Battalions can stun them so you can GTFO. As a bonus, they don't ever reduce HP to lower than 1, so I can use that to squeeze out more boss dialogue!
• The "school mechanics" are mostly fun (except, like, fishing and stuff. Sorry Flayn) and work well thematically as one way to get to know everyone. But there's a big caveat.... It gets repetitive. You'll start to hear the same lines every time you have a meal, or do a chore, or whatever. It's the same animations every time, too. Now, this isn't bad by itself. I can't expect them to make an infinite amount of animations and record an infinite amount of lines. But I should be able to skip these things more efficiently than spamming the + or A button with slow fades to/out of black. To be clear, this is mostly an issue in playthroughs after the first. If there was a feature specifically in NG+ where you can enter some kind of "mode" that just does all the tedium for you, much like you can "auto-teach" and whatnot (which I certainly made use of in playthroughs #3 and #4, after getting rid of my inhibitions about being optimal), then that would've been great.

Story (get ready)

Spoiler

This could be the most complicated "relationship" I've ever had with a fictional story. I really loved it, but for that exact reason, I felt also felt a level of disappointment. Overall, the plot is sprawling, epic, and captivating. The main characters are interesting, complex, and tragic. The supporting characters (mostly referring to supporting characters that have, well, Supports) largely have their own interesting supplementary backstories--with their own fair shares of complexity and tragedy; although this varies by character--that further lend to the fantastic worldbuilding of Fódlan and make you care that much more about the fate of the continent. It also helps that almost all of them are really likeable! The music elevates all of this, especially in the most climactic moments. Songs like "A Vow Remembered", "Between Heaven and Earth", "Indomitable Will", "Apex of the World", and more masterfully accentuate the stakes as well as the investment (whether time investment or emotional investment) I have put into all of it.

But here's the biggest issue: it's an unfinished story. And often times, they seemingly try to haphazardly fill in the gaps with the oddest things.

Here are the biggest problems with each route:

• Silver Snow
  • SS sets up an incredibly sad and interesting conflict with Edelgard, your own student, but then doesn't have her show up after the "Reunion at Dawn" cutscene until the final confrontation with her, so your interactions with her after that major story shift beneath Garreg Mach are very unfortunately limited.
  • The battle at Gronder Field is off-screen.
  • Dimitri dies off-screen.
  • Claude disappears and you never see him again.
  • Rhea turns feral in a sudden "diabolus ex machina" that basically has nothing to do with the conflict of the story up until that point, and is never hinted at in any point of the story--or if it is ever hinted at, it's (a) too minor of a hint to justify it being the finale of the story and/or (b) nonetheless disjointed from the entirety of the plot preceding the final chapter. It's also odd that the possibility of this happening to her never comes up in Verdant Wind, where it's basically the same sequence of events (and we'll get to that...). Did they want to do something else with the final chapter but didn't have time, and stuck something weird in? That's the only explanation I can think of, but I don't know. What they should have done is dedicate more time to the Edelgard conflict, and end with the Agarthans.
• Azure Moon
  • AM has a great character arc for Dimitri but resolves it much too quickly and has his mentality take a 180-degree turn after the death of Rodrigue (by the way, the lack of cutscene here was underwhelming). It's a pivotal moment for Dimitri's character for sure, and makes sense as a catalyst for him to start changing, but not so much in so short a time.
  • In the meeting between Dimitri and Edelgard, Edelgard decides to explain herself in the most vague terms possible, as if she is trying to make herself look worse. "Why'd you start the war?" "Because I thought about it... and it was the only way." What? That's it? That was supposed to be some kind of climactic debate of ideals and all it turned out to be was Person A saying "There must've been another way!" and Person B saying "No! There was not! You wouldn't understand!" The conclusion of the confrontation--that the two of them simply cannot see eye to eye--is of course inevitable, but the conversation leading up to it was a whole lot of...nothing. Let me be clear that their discussion of their childhood friendship is not what I'm criticizing; it's basically everything else. 
  • Lastly, the Agarthan problem is never addressed. Enough said on that point, I think.
• Verdant Wind
  • VW is a disservice to Claude's character. I'm aware the writers wrote Silver Snow before anything else, which is especially weird considering all the problems it uniquely has, but I digress. So clearly, they didn't have enough time to make an actual story for Claude and just copied 95% of Silver Snow.
  • We don't get nearly as much material on Claude's Almyran background as we needed.
  • Now, I actually thought the final chapter fighting Nemesis was amazing in a vacuum, but it would have made much more sense for Silver Snow to have this as its final chapter, if anything. But they might have moved it to Verdant Wind because if Rhea turning feral was the only other ending idea they had left, and it happened in what they want people to think is "Claude's route", it would feel even more out of place than it does in Silver Snow, and that's saying something. Obviously, I'm speculating about the writers' intentions, but I'm just kind of baffled. 
  • The copy-pasting problem is made even more obvious in the cutscene of Edelgard's death. She talks as if Byleth and her have a significant history, even calling them "my teacher", but in this route, they have barely interacted at all, so she has no reason to act this way. I know she has some semblance of interest in Byleth no matter the route (e.g. in AM she says a few things like "Facing you... I grow weak"), but in VW, it's just so blatantly out of place, and nothing like the few one-off interactions in AM, for instance. It honestly would have been better to have no cutscene at all, and simply have Edelgard say her last words on the map/battle screen as the player defeats her.
• Crimson Flower 
  • CF's production value is a severe step down from the rest. There is only a single cutscene, making several story moments more underwhelming than they otherwise would be when it's stuck in "visual novel mode" (for lack of a better term).
  • There should have been a battle at Gronder Field. This would probably need one battle preceding it to set it up, which would extend the route to a length that reflects the long process of war. I don't think CF needs to match the other routes' lengths, but it certainly needs to be at least a little longer.
  • Speaking of necessary additional chapters, the fact that the Agarthans are taken care of off-screen is extremely disappointing, as those were Edelgard's truest foes, and this is her route. It really seemed to be heading that way too, what with the very well done conversations between Edelgard/Hubert/Arundel that had some great (and purposefully unsubtle) subtext of disdain and hatred. Even just one extra chapter either right before the battle at the Tailtean Plains or after the battle at Fhirdiad to go after the Agarthans would have made all the difference. I might have even settled for a straight-up copy-past of the SS/VW Agarthan level. They clearly didn't have that much issue with copy-pasting, after all. It would either have to have a different cutscene associated with it, or no cutscene at all; instead, just one of the usual VN-esque scenes. They didn't have much issue with that either in CF, so I don't know what they were thinking. I guess dev time really came down to the wire.

There are also a couple of problems that are shared more or less equally across all routes (or almost all). The first is Rhea's absence during most of Part II for all routes besides CF. Rhea is so very interesting in Part I. She is this big, huge mystery. How much is she lying about the things she says? What's she trying to hide? How much do those close to her know her real intentions? Does she have some grand plan, or is she just a crazy religious zealot? Or something in between? To be fair, basically all these things get answered at one point or another. The problem, though, is that her potential as a character after Part I is squandered by simply relegating her to an exposition dumper in most routes. It's either that or being bedridden.

I also take issue with Byleth as the protagonist. As a general rule, I dislike when protagonists are silent like this, besides very rare exceptions. I don't think this is one of those exceptions. As they are in the game, Byleth just seems like they're along for the ride, not really being an active participant in the plot in their own right except as an extension of the respective lord's will. That's a problem in a game where one of the main themes is the clashing of passionate ideals. Byleth doesn't really have any except "I agree with this person, I guess." They are portrayed in the plot as simultaneously emotionless and charismatic--as a way to explain how they can convince so many to join their side, effectively teach, instill morale, etc.--and that is just weird and unconvincing. The side plot (and it might be funny in a sad way that it's a side plot) of Byleth's origins as the child of an artificially created vessel for Sothis is indeed interesting, but not enough to justify the boring nature of a silent protagonist in this story.

As a lesser criticism, the art direction in 3H is wacky. Backgrounds in cutscenes (or "events" as they're called in-game) look horrible and so low-res that it hurts. Even in general, environments, animations, visual effects, and whatnot are mediocre at best. However, the vast majority of character designs are incredible, with so much personality being expressed in basically every single character without being too "loud". There are only a few character designs that I don't love.

Okay, that was a lot of negativity at once. Let's circle back to the positives. Specifically, each route's individual strengths:

• Silver Snow 
  • Despite my disposition to this route, there are good things to point out. We do get at least some much needed Rhea material. Her confession to Byleth about their origins (and that of their mother) was a great scene until those out-of-left-field shenanigans begin. Her sorrow from the whole situation was finally put on full display; the most vulnerable Rhea ever is in the entire story.
  • The final battle with Edelgard is as fantastic as it could be, considering what little we see of her beforehand. The cutscene of her death was heart-wrenching, and the final moment of that sword coming down...shivers.
• Azure Moon
  • AM does have a satisfying character arc for Dimitri. I was only slightly disappointed with how condensed it seemed to be at the turning point, but almost all the pivotal scenes were done fantastically in terms of writing and performance. This arc actually does even more for the story than just for Dimitri; it's good how it affects every character around him that you'd expect. Take Felix, for example. He was always chastising Dimitri for being the "boar", and he wasn't even wrong to do so. When Dimitri finally got his shit together, Felix was finally able to put at least some amount of trust in the man.
  • The relationship between Dimitri and Edelgard was done mostly well besides the conversation before the final battle. I felt for both of them in this conflict. And more than anything, I was saddened to see that final cutscene. Dimitri wanted to show mercy, but Edelgard wanted both of them to continue staying true to the titular "Oath of the Dagger". Rather than hurling desperate pleas to end her life like she did to Byleth in Silver Snow--as she could not go on living without always trying to reach her goal--with Dimitri she instead showed a brief smile, no doubt remembering the friendship they once had as he Reached out his Hand (haha), and gave him a final reminder of the "Oath of the Dagger", straight to his shoulder (no doubt missing any vitals on purpose). A reminder Dimitri will never forget, no doubt.
• Verdant Wind 
  • I actually think VW does SS's story better than SS for the most part, weirdly enough. Claude's mere presence elevates the story at least a little. Because I find Byleth to be very boring, it's hard to use them as the thing to latch onto as the plot advances (ironic given they're probably supposed to act as a self-insert character). But Claude is someone whose motivations and convictions you can get behind and/or understand, just like the other two lords.
  • Not to mention, Claude finally having more dialogue with Edelgard, given their similar goals and limited dialogue beforehand, is a big plus. This reminds me that although we don't get to see Claude do things his way (he's stuck with the "Silver Snow way"), his characterization in this part of the story is still interesting. Not just obvious stuff, but moments of great subtle characterization. It is a bit of an aside:

Spoiler

At the beginning of the story, he was just the "likeable snarky guy" who wanted to know all the secrets he could. As it progressed more, he was the honorable man who wants to end bigotry across the world. And both those aspects of him are likeable enough, but it didn't quite grab me like Dimitri's growing "boar" side or Edelgard's mystique and dark secrets. When we hear Claude talk about his ambitions in greater detail, that's when his character became one of my favorites. He says what Fódlan needs is someone to unite the entire continent. This is basically what Edelgard intends to do. What does this imply about Claude? He almost certainly would have had to do something similar to Edelgard if she had not done it first (i.e., oust the Church of Seiros to eliminate their influence, which inevitably means also making an enemy of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus at the very least). Claude probably couldn't easily approach Edelgard to join her cause because of the Alliance lords being split on the issue, so he instead uses the war started by someone else as a springboard to take the 'helm of change,' so to speak, and finish the job himself, while not taking the heat of being the aggressor. So Claude is not this perfect angel after all. At least, that's my interpretation. The fact that Claude's characterization required me to do the thinking myself as opposed to the character coming out and telling me (although that's still a valid way of doing things in many cases) is very impressive.

• Crimson Flower 
  • CF did an excellent job on giving all the details on Edelgard's character, motivations, and mentality.
  • It also made me understand the tragedy of the war even more so than other routes, because, from Edelgard and co.'s perspective, I was seeing everyone fighting back in a war they did not fully understand.
  • Rhea's descent to madness was heartbreaking and terrifying at the same time. Given everything she had to go through up until that point, it makes sense that Rhea would break like this when the one individual meant to house Sothis, the goddess, her mother, literally turns their back on her. On my run of CF, I didn't happen to figure out you could spare Flayn and Seteth if you fought them with Byleth. So instead, they died, and that sent Rhea into a ranting fury the likes of which I hadn't seen before. She had just become completely alone, with only one thing left to do: take back the Crest Stone in Byleth by any means.
  • This route also highlighted how differing perspectives will muddy history. Edelgard shares her own version of the events having to do with Nemesis and the Nabateans, passed down through the royal bloodline. Rhea gives her own account in VW. But who is to say who's correct? I think it would be naïve to take either of them at their word. Edelgard's account may have been going through a game of telephone through the generations. Both that old Adrestian emperor who started passing down the story and Rhea have a vested interest in making their side look better (whether explicitly or subconsciously), so there is clear bias on both sides. The ambiguity of what started all of this only lends to the tragedy of it all.

There's more I could write, but this is very clearly long enough. And I have so much to say because the game did such a great job at getting me invested, more than most games (most stories, in fact). 3H has become my favorite FE so far despite the unfinished aspects. The reason I went so hard on my disappointments is because I was so thoroughly and absurdly impressed with all the things the story did well; I really wanted that to permeate through the entirety of the story. But it looks like it wasn't quite meant to be, with the development of this game being as odd as it seemed to be. There's never enough time. As the theme song states, "time betrays."

 

Thank you for reading. Next review: Path of Radiance.

[Edit] Gotta be honest: I've lost a lot of steam for writing long posts in general, so I may not write a PoR review. I might if I replay it in the distant future, though. Same goes for other FE games I've already completed. However, I very well may write reviews for FE games I have yet to complete.

Edited April 25, 2023 by FlamesOfRagnell

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

This route also highlighted how differing perspectives will muddy history. Edelgard shares her own version of the events having to do with Nemesis and the Nabateans, passed down through the royal bloodline. Rhea gives her own account in VW. But who is to say who's correct? I think it would be naïve to take either of them at their word. Edelgard's account may have been going through a game of telephone through the generations. Both that old Adrestian emperor who started passing down the story and Rhea have a vested interest in making their side look better (whether explicitly or subconsciously), so there is clear bias on both sides. The ambiguity of what started all of this only lends to the tragedy of it all.

The weirdest thing about that plot point is that both Rhea's "official" history of Fodlan and the Emperor's secret history depict Nemesis a lot more positively than he actually is when we see him. The only group not trying to alter the facts about Nemesis are the Agarthans who refer to him pretty plainly as a bandit.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Jotari

[FlamesOfRagnell]

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

The weirdest thing about that plot point is that both Rhea's "official" history of Fodlan and the Emperor's secret history depict Nemesis a lot more positively than he actually is when we see him. The only group not trying to alter the facts about Nemesis are the Agarthans who refer to him pretty plainly as a bandit.

Partially because of this, one thing I believe we can be actually sure about is that Nemesis was a terrible person. In the VW final battle, he is clearly a sadistic bastard. Whether he was manipulated by the Agarthans--who had been stewing in resentment for centuries by the time they contacted Nemesis, if I remember right--or just always horrible, who can say?

Going back even further, though, is when things get even less definitive. The question of why the original Agarthans rebelled against Sothis centuries before the Red Canyon incident is still up in the air. According to Rhea, they simply grew more and more greedy and power-hungry over time, and attacked Sothis and her children unprovoked. But this seems odd to me. It's entirely possible that Sothis and her children did not rule so benevolently. Sothis never does seem to completely restore her memory while within Byleth, after all.

[Dark Holy Elf]

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

The weirdest thing about that plot point is that both Rhea's "official" history of Fodlan and the Emperor's secret history depict Nemesis a lot more positively than he actually is when we see him. The only group not trying to alter the facts about Nemesis are the Agarthans who refer to him pretty plainly as a bandit.

I'd put very, very little stock in the Nemesis we see in VW. It's easy to miss, but if you have Claude fight Riegan, it becomes clear that Riegan is just a puppet, bearing zero connection to the original man. Nemesis is capable of speech, but very little (he has about six lines total in the game, if I recall), and also comes across as a mindless automaton, bent on killing Seiros and little else. Whether his mind was broken by a millenium of death/zombiehood/whatever TWSITD did, or his personality has been consciously overwritten similarly to a certain someone in Azure Gleam, I don't see much reason to trust what we see as being the true Nemesis there.

Wilhelm has zero reason to paint a positive picture of Nemesis and even Rhea, though she hates him as an enemy, refers to him as a king, not a mere bandit. I trust them a lot more than any other evidence, though it's a fair point that we don't know the full truth, and that feels deliberate - history has a tendency to get obscured, whether consciously or not.

 

Anyway @FlamesOfRagnell, good review, I enjoyed it. I agree with most of it (for all that the game is a 10 rather than an 8 to me). Probably my biggest disagreement is I'm much higher on the Dimitri/Edelgard scene prior to the final battle; I think it's wonderful characterization of both and beautifully shows their disparate viewpoints without hitting us over the head with stuff we should already know, but I can understand some frustration with it anyway.

[FlamesOfRagnell]

36 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'd put very, very little stock in the Nemesis we see in VW. It's easy to miss, but if you have Claude fight Riegan, it becomes clear that Riegan is just a puppet, bearing zero connection to the original man. Nemesis is capable of speech, but very little (he has about six lines total in the game, if I recall), and also comes across as a mindless automaton, bent on killing Seiros and little else.

That's a fair point, but I do think there are reasonable explanations for Nemesis's case. Seiros is who killed him, so of course he would be hell bent on going after her. Additionally, whether for noble intentions or not, he was waging war against Seiros and Adrestia, so he's going to want to continue. Nemesis's speech is also just as coherent as you'd expect (e.g. "You bear the Crest of Flames, just as I do!"). But all this just goes to show we can't truly know anything for sure, LOL.

43 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Anyway @FlamesOfRagnell, good review, I enjoyed it. I agree with most of it (for all that the game is a 10 rather than an 8 to me). Probably my biggest disagreement is I'm much higher on the Dimitri/Edelgard scene prior to the final battle; I think it's wonderful characterization of both and beautifully shows their disparate viewpoints without hitting us over the head with stuff we should already know, but I can understand some frustration with it anyway.

I appreciate that. I see the game as incredibly ambitious especially when it comes to the plot, and they succeeded in most places, but there's just a little too much missing or seemingly band-aid slapped on for me to rate any higher. In fact, I was tempted for some time to give a 7, but I was so utterly impressed with what they did right that it overshadowed my disappointments just enough.

Another reason I can't really rate it any higher is the graphics. While "graphics don't matter" is a popular talking point, I believe the aesthetics of a work of art is very important including in video games, and the environments during dialogue as well as gameplay really don't cut it most of the time. I'm not really talking about "fidelity" or the sheer polygons of things, but art direction and visual style. Like I wrote before, the character designs is almost the only place where the art direction of the game really shines. The sub-30 framerates in many areas also doesn't help with any of this.

As for the Dimitri/Edelgard scene, your feelings do resonate with me in principle, but when it comes to the execution of the dialogue, I can't come to terms with the odd way the writers had Edelgard speak (maybe it was a localization thing or maybe it wasn't, but I digress). The problem is probably even more apparent if AM is the player's first route, where this is pretty much the only time in the entire story that the player hears Edelgard speak at length about her intentions and motivations. It doesn't really leave an accurate impression.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'd put very, very little stock in the Nemesis we see in VW. It's easy to miss, but if you have Claude fight Riegan, it becomes clear that Riegan is just a puppet, bearing zero connection to the original man. Nemesis is capable of speech, but very little (he has about six lines total in the game, if I recall), and also comes across as a mindless automaton, bent on killing Seiros and little else. Whether his mind was broken by a millenium of death/zombiehood/whatever TWSITD did, or his personality has been consciously overwritten similarly to a certain someone in Azure Gleam, I don't see much reason to trust what we see as being the true Nemesis there.

Wilhelm has zero reason to paint a positive picture of Nemesis and even Rhea, though she hates him as an enemy, refers to him as a king, not a mere bandit. I trust them a lot more than any other evidence, though it's a fair point that we don't know the full truth, and that feels deliberate - history has a tendency to get obscured, whether consciously or not.

 

Anyway @FlamesOfRagnell, good review, I enjoyed it. I agree with most of it (for all that the game is a 10 rather than an 8 to me). Probably my biggest disagreement is I'm much higher on the Dimitri/Edelgard scene prior to the final battle; I think it's wonderful characterization of both and beautifully shows their disparate viewpoints without hitting us over the head with stuff we should already know, but I can understand some frustration with it anyway.

There's nothing to put in doubt that he butchered Sothis and a whole horde of other people in their sleep and then carved weapons out of their bones and organs though.

[Dark Holy Elf]

8 minutes ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

Nemesis's speech is also just as coherent as you'd expect (e.g. "You bear the Crest of Flames, just as I do!")

That's probably his most eloquent line! His only other lines are "Feeble creature... Prepare to die!", "Seiros! I will kill you! Do not get in my way!", and "All those who stand in my way...will be destroyed!" Toss in the weird way it's voice acted, and I feel like this is a man with something wrong with him, mentally. Doesn't seem like someone who would have been a king for a hundred years. But who can say?

11 minutes ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

Another reason I can't really rate it any higher is the graphics. While "graphics don't matter" is a popular talking point, I believe the aesthetics of a work of art is very important including in video games, and the environments during dialogue as well as gameplay really don't cut it most of the time. I'm not really talking about "fidelity" or the sheer polygons of things, but art direction and visual style. Like I wrote before, the character designs is almost the only place where the art direction of the game really shines. The sub-30 framerates in many areas also doesn't help with any of this.

 

That's fair, but I don't really care about any of this. Graphics don't really matter to me. Aesthetics, now, do, but I don't put much stock in environments I suppose. During dialogue in particular... the backgrounds could be a blur for all I care (and actually, this is kind of how human vision works!), as long as they inform me about where the scene is taking place - I'm watching the characters. The characters look good to me, that's about where my concern begins and ends.

My two biggest complaints on the graphics front, if any, are (a) the S support art, many of those pieces are bad IMO and they are disappointing as one of the last things you'll see in the game, and (b) the anime-style videos, which I find quite low quality (one of my other little disagreements in your review was wanting more of them; I liked the in-game engine better). But in general stuff like this just doesn't move my score on a game.

15 minutes ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

The problem is probably even more apparent if AM is the player's first route, where this is pretty much the only time in the entire story that the player hears Edelgard speak at length about her intentions and motivations. It doesn't really leave an accurate impression.

What's hard to understand about "I weighed the victims of war against the victims of the world as it is now, and I chose the former."? The game is just respecting you enough to have paid attention during White Clouds + all the supports and noticed what a dysfunctional society Fodlan is. Notice that Dimitri thinks "there had to be another way", but he can't actually name one... and he doesn't contest what Edelgard's reasons were. The point is not Edelgard's reasons (you should really know what those are by that point, even if this is your first route), the point is that the two of them fundamentally disagree whether doing the things Edelgard did to accomplish her goals was justified. And the point is that can't really be reconciled. What did you want Edelgard/Dimitri to say differently?

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

There's nothing to put in doubt that he butchered Sothis and a whole horde of other people in their sleep and then carved weapons out of their bones and organs though.

Agreed.

[FlamesOfRagnell]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I feel like this is a man with something wrong with him, mentally. Doesn't seem like someone who would have been a king for a hundred years. But who can say?

You're right, and I think this can be explained equally well by both sides. If you have just been brought back from the dead, and the last thing you remember is being stabbed in the chest by your mortal enemy, then I think that's how you would act regardless of any potential Agarthan meddling. So yeah, any of our explanations make sense.

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Graphics don't really matter to me. Aesthetics, now, do, but I don't put much stock in environments I suppose. During dialogue in particular... the backgrounds could be a blur for all I care (and actually, this is kind of how human vision works!), as long as they inform me about where the scene is taking place - I'm watching the characters. The characters look good to me, that's about where my concern begins and ends.

My two biggest complaints on the graphics front, if any, are (a) the S support art, many of those pieces are bad IMO and they are disappointing as one of the last things you'll see in the game, and (b) the anime-style videos, which I find quite low quality (one of my other little disagreements in your review was wanting more of them; I liked the in-game engine better). But in general stuff like this just doesn't move my score on a game.

I find all of that to be a part of aesthetics, but of course you can like what you like and disregard whatever you wish. That's all fine.

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

What's hard to understand about "I weighed the victims of war against the victims of the world as it is now, and I chose the former."? The game is just respecting you enough to have paid attention during White Clouds + all the supports and noticed what a dysfunctional society Fodlan is. Notice that Dimitri thinks "there had to be another way", but he can't actually name one... and he doesn't contest what Edelgard's reasons were. The point is not Edelgard's reasons (you should really know what those are by that point, even if this is your first route), the point is that the two of them fundamentally disagree whether doing the things Edelgard did to accomplish her goals was justified. And the point is that can't really be reconciled. What did you want Edelgard/Dimitri to say differently?

You know, after taking this in and looking at the scene once more, you may have now dulled my dissatisfaction to this scene. But I still can't quite shake the feeling that there wasn't quite enough substance there. Thank you very much for offering that counterpoint, though.

Edited January 30, 2023 by FlamesOfRagnell

[Mordred]

Nice review, gotta say I agree with most of it.  I also def agree that art design can be better but I have that problem with a majority of Switch games.  Put Elden Ring for example, I played that game on the lowest settings capped to 30 fps on my really bad 2010 Laptop and it still looked beautiful at like 10 fps (Thank God I build a new computer recently).  However, I think it's often a lesser focus of Fire Emblem games so I don't know if it'll be fixed anytime soon.

Also the dissatisfaction with the confrontation with Edel and Dimitri I feel is more of the result of it not being a game like Metal Gear Solid or an Anime/Show where we would get more dialogue throughout the battle or get like an hour cutscene after.

[FlamesOfRagnell]

27 minutes ago, Mordred said:

Nice review, gotta say I agree with most of it.  I also def agree that art design can be better but I have that problem with a majority of Switch games.  Put Elden Ring for example, I played that game on the lowest settings capped to 30 fps on my really bad 2010 Laptop and it still looked beautiful at like 10 fps (Thank God I build a new computer recently).  However, I think it's often a lesser focus of Fire Emblem games so I don't know if it'll be fixed anytime soon.

Thank you for the compliment. I might need to clarify my thoughts on the art direction a little. The framerate is not the primary issue, although it is a big one. A game can certainly still look beautiful at low FPS like you pointed out. LoZ:BotW looks beautiful despite low resolution textures and occasionally 20-something framerates. The same goes for Twilight Princess on GameCube. Although one may disagree with either of these and not particularly like the art direction(s), I'm sure we can all think of personal examples where we think x game looks beautiful despite low resolution textures and framerates. 3H runs into issues where the backgrounds in dialogue scenes are basically stretched, distorted flat images instead of the 3D locations they are supposed to represent. They go for a sort of realistic, dark aesthetic with their forests, castles, and what have you, but when you don't have the luxury of using high res textures like Elden Ring, you have to put in some effort to make it look interesting in other ways, like Twilight Princess does (in my opinion). 3H almost looks like they just took photos of the real life surfaces of walls and the ground and whatnot and just compressed the hell out of the resulting images.

38 minutes ago, Mordred said:

Also the dissatisfaction with the confrontation with Edel and Dimitri I feel is more of the result of it not being a game like Metal Gear Solid or an Anime/Show where we would get more dialogue throughout the battle or get like an hour cutscene after.

Well, I don't really think that's my issue, since my main criticisms of Metal Gear and many anime are precisely the frequent over-explanation of everything. But I do believe the Dimitri/Edelgard scene could have used a couple more minutes of dialogue to give it more substance. I'm afraid it's hard to put my problem into words beyond than that.

[Mordred]

2 minutes ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

Thank you for the compliment. I might need to clarify my thoughts on the art direction a little. The framerate is not the primary issue, although it is a big one. A game can certainly still look beautiful at low FPS like you pointed out. LoZ:BotW looks beautiful despite low resolution textures and occasionally 20-something framerates. The same goes for Twilight Princess on GameCube. Although one may disagree with either of these and not particularly like the art direction(s), I'm sure we can all think of personal examples where we think x game looks beautiful despite low resolution textures and framerates. 3H runs into issues where the backgrounds in dialogue scenes are basically stretched, distorted flat images instead of the 3D locations they are supposed to represent. They go for a sort of realistic, dark aesthetic with their forests, castles, and what have you, but when you don't have the luxury of using high res textures like Elden Ring, you have to put in some effort to make it look interesting in other ways, like Twilight Princess does (in my opinion). 3H almost looks like they just took photos of the real life surfaces of walls and the ground and whatnot and just compressed the hell out of the resulting images.

Well, I don't really think that's my issue, since my main criticisms of Metal Gear and many anime are precisely the frequent over-explanation of everything. But I do believe the Dimitri/Edelgard scene could have used a couple more minutes of dialogue to give it more substance. I'm afraid it's hard to put my problem into words beyond than that.

Yea I'm not talking about fps, tbh I don't even notice fps issues often, it's definitely how the contrast of the more realistic low res models combined with the more stylized graphics that's the problem imo.  I was using Elden Ring more as an example as many games have better graphics but look worse than Elden Ring due to art design which I didn't properly clarify so that's on me.

Oh yea I definitely didn't mean it should be like an Anime or Metal Gear but as in we would definitely have a longer scene of them comparing their ideals against each other if it weren't a tatics game and was like an action game where they can talk while we fight.  Because it's a tatics game we can't get that additional dialogue in the middle of the map with a speech bubble every turn or something and we also didn't get a longer cutscene either.

[FlamesOfRagnell]

7 minutes ago, Mordred said:

Yea I'm not talking about fps, tbh I don't even notice fps issues often, it's definitely how the contrast of the more realistic low res models combined with the more stylized graphics that's the problem imo.  I was using Elden Ring more as an example as many games have better graphics but look worse than Elden Ring due to art design which I didn't properly clarify so that's on me.

Oh yea I definitely didn't mean it should be like an Anime or Metal Gear but as in we would definitely have a longer scene of them comparing their ideals against each other if it weren't a tatics game and was like an action game where they can talk while we fight.  Because it's a tatics game we can't get that additional dialogue in the middle of the map with a speech bubble every turn or something and we also didn't get a longer cutscene either.

Ah, I think I understand now. Thank you for clarifying.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

Well, I don't really think that's my issue, since my main criticisms of Metal Gear and many anime are precisely the frequent over-explanation of everything. But I do believe the Dimitri/Edelgard scene could have used a couple more minutes of dialogue to give it more substance. I'm afraid it's hard to put my problem into words beyond than that.

It's not more time it needs, it's just plain better writing. Both characters go there with a goal in mind, peace, presumably, but don't make any actual attempts to achieve it. They just spout empty platitudes. It's because they didn't care about what was actually being said for the scene, it only existed because they needed to bring up the knife for the sake of the ending.

[FlamesOfRagnell]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

It's not more time it needs, it's just plain better writing. Both characters go there with a goal in mind, peace, presumably, but don't make any actual attempts to achieve it. They just spout empty platitudes. It's because they didn't care about what was actually being said for the scene, it only existed because they needed to bring up the knife for the sake of the ending.

Yeah, there is the fact that they don't really talk about the possibility of peace. Maybe that's the thing (or at least one thing) the scene is missing for me. The scene probably should have opened with that. I also think it would have devolved into something similar all the same (I don't think it was platitudes). But then it would have had more leading up to it, and that would probably make it a better scene. There is actually some dialogue (combat dialogue and some other dialogue) between the two of them in Three Hopes (of which I've only completed Scarlet Blaze) that actually adds something to this effect.

Edited January 30, 2023 by FlamesOfRagnell

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

Yeah, there is the fact that they don't really talk about the possibility of peace. Maybe that's the thing (or at least one thing) the scene is missing for me. The scene probably should have opened with that. I also think it would have devolved into something similar all the same (I don't think it was platitudes). But then it would have had more leading up to it, and that would probably make it a better scene. There is actually some dialogue (combat dialogue and some other dialogue) between the two of them in Three Hopes (of which I've only completed Scarlet Blaze) that actually adds something to this effect.

I find Three Hopes has better moment to moment writing and dialogue than Three Hopes. But it suffers massively from them just kind of dicking around in the same world as Three Houses and not really having a story of their own to tell with any strong themes or arcs. It's kind of all What if without any Why if (ya, that sounds really corny, but I'm posting it anyway).

[Dark Holy Elf]

13 hours ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

I find all of that to be a part of aesthetics, but of course you can like what you like and disregard whatever you wish. That's all fine.

14 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yep. And I'd say the same thing to you, of course; to be clear I have no problem for you deciding to score the game lower for things like background graphics, just explaining that I personally do not. It'd be pretty boring if we all valued all things exactly equally!

 

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

It's not more time it needs, it's just plain better writing. Both characters go there with a goal in mind, peace, presumably, but don't make any actual attempts to achieve it.

I think this is a reflection of the fact they're both very stubborn, and also a bit defeatist. Neither actually thinks the other will actually compromise, so yes, the efforts they make are not very good. Both feel obligated to try, which is why they're there, but I wouldn't say their hearts are in it: I don't think either believes the meeting will result in peace.

In Edelgard's case, she has a messiah complex and basically refuses to believe anyone except her can save Fodlan. Ceding power to Dimitri and the Church is unthinkable to her, so compromise isn't an option to her (even though as outsiders we can see it's the best path objectively). In Dimitri's case, he knows how stubborn Edelgard is and I really think he mostly attends that meeting because he desperately wants to talk with his childhood friend one more time.

One of the reasons I really like the scene, aside from the fact that we can see so much of how both characters think in it, is just that it happens. Sure, the attempt was doomed to failure, and I think there are reasons for that, and also that both characters know it. But there's nothing equivalent in other routes. On Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, in particular, I feel like reconciliation should be at least as possible as on AM, but there isn't even an attempt made... even though we know Claude and Edelgard's ideals are actually fairly close, while Byleth has a darn good reason to want to try to do well by their former student on SS.

[FlamesOfRagnell]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I find Three Hopes has better moment to moment writing and dialogue than Three Hopes. But it suffers massively from them just kind of dicking around in the same world as Three Houses and not really having a story of their own to tell with any strong themes or arcs. It's kind of all What if without any Why if (ya, that sounds really corny, but I'm posting it anyway).

I might agree about the first point, but in any case it's pretty close I think. The "what if without why" does really resonate with me, haha.

[SnowFire]

On 1/29/2023 at 2:50 PM, FlamesOfRagnell said:

Going back even further, though, is when things get even less definitive. The question of why the original Agarthans rebelled against Sothis centuries before the Red Canyon incident is still up in the air. According to Rhea, they simply grew more and more greedy and power-hungry over time, and attacked Sothis and her children unprovoked. But this seems odd to me. It's entirely possible that Sothis and her children did not rule so benevolently. Sothis never does seem to completely restore her memory while within Byleth, after all.

There's some valid questions on how much the writers were intentionally making the War of Liberation and the past 1000 years murky or just were being inconsistent, but I think that mostly applies to Nemesis and the Elites.  I don't think there's any question about how the game feels about the Agarthans - if they wanted you to feel bad for them, they had ample opportunity to deepen them in the present and decline to do so, so there's no reason to assume they were more sympathetic in the past.  Rather, they serve as the implacable force of evil that causes Rhea to react harshly in an over-the-top way as seen in the Abyss Library: that non-Children of the Goddess cannot be trusted with power, because they will use it badly. 

To step outside Three Houses a moment, it's a common plot point to have a character who suffers some injustice in the past, and lashes out in a counterproductive way, and either becomes some sort of villain themselves or else have to be talked down dramatically that no, all XYZs aren't evil just because that one friend of yours betrayed you years ago, etc.  This plot point is inherently weaker if the person is somehow "wrong" about their past: it means that they simply just needed to be corrected on the error of fact, and the moral argument is less salient.  When you do do that plot point anyway, this misapprehension will generally be corrected, and the person can either shift their fury onto a more accurate target or else abandon it all together if it was an accident / their own fault / or so on, and you won't focus the moral argument too heavily.

Given that, from a perspective of Seiros's character, she's someone who learned the lesson that others cannot be trusted with cool technology and stuff, because eventually actually evil forces will use it to do evil like ganking her mom.  For this to work best, these forces need to be Actually Evil to show that Seiros isn't just hallucinating the threat.   And, well, the Agarthans textually are portrayed as indeed Just Evil.  This fits with Seiros, the conflicted morally gray character who has a point but has also gone too far.  If you wanted to do your version of the plot, you'd basically need to portray Seiros as either much more evil or deluded herself (ignoring her CF route where she is indeed both, but has also gone crazy after her favored vessel to restore mom has gone insane and betrayed her).

As a side comment, if you want to see an example of this plot point done reasonably well, check out PSX Star Ocean 2 of all games.  (20+ year old spoiler warning?)  In the second half of the game, you find out that there was this Nedian Empire of space elves that ruled the galaxy with peace and justice blah blah blah but voluntarily decided to retreat to this tiny hidden artificial planet of Energy Nede, a backup of the original Nede, to let the rest of the galaxy develop on their own or something.  Uh huh, sure.  They also built 10 sentient superweapons for, uh, reasons.  If you get access to the hidden archives of the library in the game - not required at all, do it at your own pace - you find a much more sensible backstory: the Nedian Empire had basically been galactic tyrants, and there was a rebellion to overthrow them, and they were losing it.  They had two ideas: retreat to this hidden artificial planet to hide their survivors from the rebel fleet, and also build 10 sentient superweapons powerful enough to smash the rebels.  The first idea won, but they still had 10 superweapons lying around from the second who were annoyed about not getting to wreck shit, so they had to get sealed away...  by another nearby planet somehow...  okay don't think about this one too hard.  But yeah, the Ten Wise Men are mad about being sealed and still want to go wreck some shit after thousands of years of delay, so boss time.  Anyway, point is, the game made the fact that the Nedians portrayed their history rather more benevolently than merited over the generations is textual, although the hypocrisy angle doesn't really matter because the only people from the imperial era still alive were either a powerless kid who was frozen for reasons, or the Ten Wise Men themselves who also definitely weren't in charge of decisions back then.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

I might agree about the first point, but in any case it's pretty close I think. The "what if without why" does really resonate with me, haha.

I was just trying to be clever with words there XD

1 hour ago, SnowFire said:

Given that, from a perspective of Seiros's character, she's someone who learned the lesson that others cannot be trusted with cool technology and stuff, because eventually actually evil forces will use it to do evil like ganking her mom.  For this to work best, these forces need to be Actually Evil to show that Seiros isn't just hallucinating the threat.   And, well, the Agarthans textually are portrayed as indeed Just Evil.  This fits with Seiros, the conflicted morally gray character who has a point but has also gone too far.  If you wanted to do your version of the plot, you'd basically need to portray Seiros as either much more evil or deluded herself (ignoring her CF route where she is indeed both, but has also gone crazy after her favored vessel to restore mom has gone insane and betrayed her).

I feel it still could be achieved better though. Yes, for such a story evil must exist, but it doesn't have to be so, I guess the word would be, basic. Humanity has proven countless times that improvements in technology bring improvements in how to effectively kill large numbers of people. So it's not a bad theme. But all of those massacres in the 20th century were based on something. There were always complex motivations and reasons and even ideology that led to it.  No one fire bomber cities just for shits and giggles. And that's what irks me about the Agarthans so much. I feel they're very close to being an actual really good plot point, but they miss the bar so much by just refusing to put any nuance into them. Like I've just said on the Unpopular Opinions page, they could have been a force with ignoble methods but a noble cause. They can still be evil while being nuanced. But the closest we get to what they're actually after is Solon's talk about cleansing the world.

1 hour ago, SnowFire said:

As a side comment, if you want to see an example of this plot point done reasonably well, check out PSX Star Ocean 2 of all games.  (20+ year old spoiler warning?)  In the second half of the game, you find out that there was this Nedian Empire of space elves that ruled the galaxy with peace and justice blah blah blah but voluntarily decided to retreat to this tiny hidden artificial planet of Energy Nede, a backup of the original Nede, to let the rest of the galaxy develop on their own or something.  Uh huh, sure.  They also built 10 sentient superweapons for, uh, reasons.  If you get access to the hidden archives of the library in the game - not required at all, do it at your own pace - you find a much more sensible backstory: the Nedian Empire had basically been galactic tyrants, and there was a rebellion to overthrow them, and they were losing it.  They had two ideas: retreat to this hidden artificial planet to hide their survivors from the rebel fleet, and also build 10 sentient superweapons powerful enough to smash the rebels.  The first idea won, but they still had 10 superweapons lying around from the second who were annoyed about not getting to wreck shit, so they had to get sealed away...  by another nearby planet somehow...  okay don't think about this one too hard.  But yeah, the Ten Wise Men are mad about being sealed and still want to go wreck some shit after thousands of years of delay, so boss time.  Anyway, point is, the game made the fact that the Nedians portrayed their history rather more benevolently than merited over the generations is textual, although the hypocrisy angle doesn't really matter because the only people from the imperial era still alive were either a powerless kid who was frozen for reasons, or the Ten Wise Men themselves who also definitely weren't in charge of decisions back then.

How did they manage to write a benevolent history about themselves when it was the rebels who actually won the conflict?

[SnowFire]

Jotari: Oh, I agree, the Agarthans are a dropped ball.  I'm just saying that in the game that shipped, I don't believe we're supposed to take Flames of Ragnell's argument that they might have been justified in their actions in the backstory.  We're supposed to think that they are indeed very bad, and that's what drove Rhea to her extreme measures.

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

How did they manage to write a benevolent history about themselves when it was the rebels who actually won the conflict?

It was a planet hidden by an energy field or some such (hence the name, Energy Nede) that nobody else could get to and the descendants living on Energy Nede mostly couldn't leave.  It appeared invisible to other space travelers and certainly wasn't exchanging news or books.  And it was a thousand plus years later.  The Nedians were only talking to themselves, and I presume that they preferred reading their old literature that talked about how awesome the Nedian Empire was rather than the works of the opposition that said maybe everyone didn't love them as much as they thought pre-rebellion.  (The only reason why the PC party gets to Nede at all is because it includes the kid of the scientist who built the energy whizbang anamoly sealing it away and her magic pendant acts as a key in.)

Checking the script, the person who introduces you to Nede also claims that the war was against the Ten Wise Men who were just evil and hated everything, which isn't strictly wrong, but he definitely leaves out / doesn't know that Nede was who created them.  And also that the reason the Nedians retreated to their own hidden planet was because they had sufficient power to rule the galaxy but just kindly deigned to back off, which is definitely wrong. 

[FlamesOfRagnell]

5 hours ago, SnowFire said:

There's some valid questions on how much the writers were intentionally making the War of Liberation and the past 1000 years murky or just were being inconsistent, but I think that mostly applies to Nemesis and the Elites.  I don't think there's any question about how the game feels about the Agarthans - if they wanted you to feel bad for them, they had ample opportunity to deepen them in the present and decline to do so, so there's no reason to assume they were more sympathetic in the past.  Rather, they serve as the implacable force of evil that causes Rhea to react harshly in an over-the-top way as seen in the Abyss Library: that non-Children of the Goddess cannot be trusted with power, because they will use it badly.

With the information we have (i.e., without very much behind-the-scenes info on the game's writing process) I am going to elect to give the the writers the benefit of the doubt in this particular instance. As for the game portraying the Agarthans as clearly evil when we see them, you are completely correct, of course. But I think it's completely within reason to wonder whether they were always like this, or devolved (ironic given they call everyone else beasts) after centuries of being underground and resorting to self-mutilating and implanting themselves with the body parts of gods and [edit: not actually sure about that part] miscellaneous tech.... That could make any group go absolutely insane, whether they started like that or not.

You're also right that the writers could have given more information on their background if they really wanted the player to feel bad for them. But I don't think the game ever wants to, needs to, or should do that. If you'll forgive the possibly lame example, think of the Joker from Batman. Unquestionably evil when the audience sees him. But it's often left up in the air whether he was always like this (a sort of pure incarnation of chaos) or if something led up to it. This being an open question doesn't ever make it so the Joker is potentially sympathetic, nor is it meant to. I think the Agarthans are somewhat similar. Not in their specific characterization--because obviously the Agarthans have clear motivations and goals, while the Joker just spreads chaos indiscriminately--but rather, they are a source of intrigue for the player. You may think I'm being too charitable to the writers, but as long as this is not contradicted, I believe it to be a fair interpretation. Not definitive by any means, but fair.

Now, purely as an antagonistic force, I do find them somewhat weak as a result of them not having enough screen time (although not quite as strongly as many others around here, evidently), but that's a slightly different topic.

5 hours ago, SnowFire said:

For this to work best, these forces need to be Actually Evil to show that Seiros isn't just hallucinating the threat.   And, well, the Agarthans textually are portrayed as indeed Just Evil.  This fits with Seiros, the conflicted morally gray character who has a point but has also gone too far.  If you wanted to do your version of the plot, you'd basically need to portray Seiros as either much more evil or deluded herself

That is certainly another valid interpretation of the Rhea character. I find myself going back and forth between this interpretation and the one I previously mentioned, and that's why I enjoy the ambiguous presentation of this lore. Even if one interpretation puts Rhea's character arc in a completely different light than the other, I find it fascinating all the same.

3 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Flames of Ragnell's argument that they might have been justified in their actions in the backstory.

If I somehow implied that I thought they were justified at any point, I should apologize. No matter which interpretation is correct, how the Agarthans chose to retaliate is disgusting. I only suggested that they might have not attacked unprovoked. But even if that's true, the Agarthans obviously went too far afterwards.

Edited January 31, 2023 by FlamesOfRagnell

[Jotari]

47 minutes ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

With the information we have (i.e., without very much behind-the-scenes info on the game's writing process) I am going to elect to give the the writers the benefit of the doubt in this particular instance. As for the game portraying the Agarthans as clearly evil when we see them, you are completely correct, of course. But I think it's completely within reason to wonder whether they were always like this, or devolved (ironic given they call everyone else beasts) after centuries of being underground and resorting to self-mutilating and implanting themselves with the body parts of gods and miscellaneous tech.... That could make any group go absolutely insane, whether they started like that or not.

For what it's worth, we have a flashback chapter to them in the Nemesis era in Three Hopes and they use the exact same language, calling people beasts and the like. And apparently Thales was alive at the time, or possibly someone with his name, but I'm pretty sure the game wants us to think it's him. So they haven't spent generations living under ground, they themselves are just immortal and super old. Granted there's also a huge amount of time between the Aleili backstory stuff and the Nemesis stuff, and being immortal would cause it's own form of sanity and (especially) moral degradation. But, well, clarification, of sorts.

47 minutes ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

because obviously the Agarthans have clear motivations and goals

They do? Because I've just been complaining about the fact that they don't. The only actual goal they seem to have is Rhea gone. Beyond that, what is their vision for the continent? To spread Shamballan culture across the world? To turn everyone into a mole person? To enslave all the regular people and make a caste system? Ton do...something with Arval and Zaharas? To go back underground and perfect dubstep? Aside from the most generic motivation and goal of "power for the sake of power" they really don't have clear motivations and goals as I see it. All they ever say is they want to cleanse the world or something to that effect, but what taint they see on the world beyond Rhea, and probably the other Nabateans is a big shrug. At most we can deduce they want what they were doing in the century or so Nemesis was in control, as that was the height of their victory over Sothis, presumably a bigger threat to them than Rhea. But all they did in that time was support feudalism. The exact same thing everyone else in the series does (yes, yes, Edelgard, I see you there, go sit in the corner with Ashnard).

[FlamesOfRagnell]

32 minutes ago, Jotari said:

For what it's worth, we have a flashback chapter to them in the Nemesis era in Three Hopes and they use the exact same language, calling people beasts and the like. And apparently Thales was alive at the time, or possibly someone with his name, but I'm pretty sure the game wants us to think it's him. So they haven't spent generations living under ground, they themselves are just immortal and super old. Granted there's also a huge amount of time between the Aleili backstory stuff and the Nemesis stuff, and being immortal would cause it's own form of sanity and (especially) moral degradation. But, well, clarification, of sorts.

Beyond vague references I'd rather stay away from Three Hopes talk as I haven't finished. I'm also wondering if Three Hopes is even "canon" or "canon-adjacent". Like, if the premise changed in this way, things would've definitely gone this way in Three Houses? Is it the same writers who worked on both?

32 minutes ago, Jotari said:

1 hour ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

because obviously the Agarthans have clear motivations and goals

They do? Because I've just been complaining about the fact that they don't. The only actual goal they seem to have is Rhea gone. Beyond that, what is their vision for the continent? To spread Shamballan culture across the world? To turn everyone into a mole person? To enslave all the regular people and make a caste system? Ton do...something with Arval and Zaharas? To go back underground and perfect dubstep? Aside from the most generic motivation and goal of "power for the sake of power" they really don't have clear motivations and goals as I see it. All they ever say is they want to cleanse the world or something to that effect, but what taint they see on the world beyond Rhea, and probably the other Nabateans is a big shrug. At most we can deduce they want what they were doing in the century or so Nemesis was in control, as that was the height of their victory over Sothis, presumably a bigger threat to them than Rhea. But all they did in that time was support feudalism. The exact same thing everyone else in the series does (yes, yes, Edelgard, I see you there, go sit in the corner with Ashnard).

Obviously I'm not saying they have deep goals. You've answered your own question in this tangent.

It is beyond odd to imply that Edelgard and Ashnard are similar in either goals or motivation. [PoR and Awakening spoilers below]

Spoiler

Ashnard just wants to sew as much violence and conflict as possible literally for the sake of it.

If anything, a closer comparison would be Walhart because he wants to unite the world under one rule and not just kill for the sake of killing. But I don't think I even need to point out the many, many differences between him and Edelgard in terms of future plans for government/social structure, ideology (social Darwinism versus meritocracy, Messiah complex aside), etc. etc.

 

Edited January 31, 2023 by FlamesOfRagnell

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, FlamesOfRagnell said:

Beyond vague references I'd rather stay away from Three Hopes talk as I haven't finished. I'm also wondering if Three Hopes is even "canon" or "canon-adjacent". Like, if the premise changed in this way, things would've definitely gone this way in Three Houses? Is it the same writers who worked on both?

Obviously I'm not saying they have deep goals. You've answered your own question in this tangent.

It is beyond odd to imply that Edelgard and Ashnard are similar in either goals or motivation. [PoR and Awakening spoilers below]

  Hide contents

Ashnard just wants to sew as much violence and conflict as possible literally for the sake of it.

If anything, a closer comparison would be Walhart because he wants to unite the world under one rule and not just kill for the sake of killing. But I don't think I even need to point out the many, many differences between him and Edelgard in terms of future plans for government/social structure, ideology (social Darwinism versus meritocracy, Messiah complex aside), etc. etc.

 

No, violence isn't his goal. A new world order is his goal. And he's literally willing to gamble on a dark god wiping out all life if there's a chance for him to stat civilization again. He spells it out pretty clearly in his convo with Reyson.

Spoiler

Ashnard: I do. Oh, how I do... It's true. The world may be destroyed by the coming of the dark god. Then again, it may not. I question the way in which our society is designed. No matter what strength a person has, it is the station he is born into that controls his destiny. And you cannot control where you will be born. Do you believe that a person of low birth should simply endure the curse of his station? I think not. If you are stronger than those around you, you should benefit from your strength. This is why I will use my strength to remake this world. Class and rank will not matter. Human and sub-human will not matter. The strong will possess everything. The weak will submit to their will. Is this not the meaning of peace?

It's just Edelgard on steroids.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Jotari

[FlamesOfRagnell]

Spoiler

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

He spells it out pretty clearly in his convo with Reyson

I don't think I ever got to see that exchange, unfortunately. This means that Ashnard is an even more extreme version of Walhart. 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Spoiler

Ashnard: I do. Oh, how I do... It's true. The world may be destroyed by the coming of the dark god. Then again, it may not. I question the way in which our society is designed. No matter what strength a person has, it is the station he is born into that controls his destiny. And you cannot control where you will be born. Do you believe that a person of low birth should simply endure the curse of his station? I think not. If you are stronger than those around you, you should benefit from your strength. This is why I will use my strength to remake this world. Class and rank will not matter. Human and sub-human will not matter. The strong will possess everything. The weak will submit to their will. Is this not the meaning of peace?

It's just Edelgard on steroids.

I think not.... There are semblances of a similar premise, a similar starting point maybe, but the two of them end up in very different places. Ashnard is a sadistic man who, like Walhart, wishes for a kind of social Darwinism where the strong always dominate the weak. As a side note, there is irony in this, as one could say that if one cannot be strong enough to rise above their low birth, they were weak to begin with. But enough about that. Edelgard, on the other hand, certainly does not want that sort of society. To her, the strong dominating the weak is a serious violation of the weak's freedom.