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emblemxeno · 2 years

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Anon Asks about Three Hopes Spoilers

If your ask isn’t here, it may be in the queue!

Apparently there is a 4th route once you beat the other three (heard this from others so take it with a grain of salt) so maybe the reason why all the routes end in a cliffhanger is to set up the ‘True ending’. The Sonic Adventure games are the best example of this I can think of and I hope that’s what they’re doing cause if the ending is locked behind dlc that’s scummy as hell

There’s been rumors of a true ending that unlocks after playing all routes. That’s the only thing that can save the game for me at this point. Not even Dimitri getting character assassinated the least is making want to buy it.

That's what I hope for, but I'm always skeptical. It would be really scummy if they just saved it for DLC.

*spoilers* so question, since you can avoid byleth and jeralt in the respective chapters and recruit them, I wonder if doing so in all three routes via ng+ will have a different outcome or not vs not saving byleth and jeralt and keeping them as enemies? maybe arval’s dialogue may switch around?

I don't know myself, but I think Jeralt surviving creates the alternate path in one of the chapters, cuz his death leads to Byleth's rampant hostility against Shez

...and I already have seen some Edelstans complain that Dimitri is an asshole because he just left Edelgard there in AG ending. Like wtf. Yes She has been controlled to do awful things but she started the war voluntarily. Is that too much to ask Dimitri reach his hands towards her? That's why I have problem with AG ending because it just like shift the responsibility. Still AG overall is much better than GW.

Can’t say I’m surprised. It’s weird that Edelgard apparently got reverted to “a child like mindset”, but at least he didn’t kill her? If I were them I’d look for the small victories.

I remember when Fates came out, people were so pissed that Revelations was locked behind DLC. I was okay with that, since Conquest and Birthright were at least complete games. 3 Hopes ending on cliffhangers, which will presumably be “fixed” with DLC, is inexcusable. I just wonder, due to the sheer popularity of Three Houses, if people will even care.

GOD, SAME! Like, people can complain all they want about Fates’ business model, but at least you’re paying for 3 separate campaigns, with uniqe maps and stories, and each route has an actual conclusion! Is everything solved? No, but at least the main conflict is over! Three Hopes just... what???

I know this will probably be a hot take idk. But by removing Byleth and whiteclouds/silver snow the game loses a lot depth and lore. You loose the ability to understand and bond with the green family. Which ruins the impact of siding with them or caring about Rhea at all. Rather you recruit Byleth or not has zero impact on the story. Which is such a weak willed move to do its like removing Corrin from Few1 because a vocal minority hated Corrin. Crests somehow end up even less important. 1/2

Its incredibly stupid marketing to as the game hypes up the Shez Byleth rivalry. Which in the end don’t matter because the lore doesn’t matter. What they did to Claude is also so strange. Its like they took offense to people saying “good guy” Claude wouldn’t fight Dimitri at grondors. By making him Pepsi Nitro Edelgard. At the cost of his own interesting under developed concept of using church for his own goals. But thats not even consistent thanks to Claudes SB actions. Also what happened 2/3

to three houses redemption themes with Rhea and Dimitri. Heck the revenge themes are even watered down. In a game were the empire and ancient evil king are called revenge. The only thing they did right is war is pointless and endless. But the war in three houses was only a handful of chapters. 3/3

All of this! Like, I get that it’s a spinoff musou and they don’t wanna tread the same water here, but not having any closure on the Nabateans when you bothered to show them in the first damn cutscene? Warping character motivations from the ground up? Hyping up a conflict that doesn’t even impact the main plot that much at all? I think it’s incredibly shoddy.

Do you think the FE fandom (specifically the 3H fandom) is going to enter the Voltron post-s8 phase after 3 hopes/nopes?

LMAOOOOO, I don’t think we’re in fear of going that far, but damn it’s gonna get annoying as hell

I like Fates and the way I feel about 3 Hopes is what they like to claim Fates is: good gameplay with bad story. I’m holding out for a Revelation route to fix this mess.

At the end of the day, it’s a non-canon musou that gets a lot of lore and story shit wrong, so if there’s a fix it route, all we can hope for is some kind of cheesy “friendship saves everyone” last hurrah

from what i have seen there seems to be three versions of Claude’s fate in SB, and the ending will be changed according to the fate of Claude.

1, Claude betrayed empire earlier, died on fighting the Empire, alliance revolts against empire in the ending txt.

2, Claude did not die and he betrayed empire in the ending text, fought empire with beleaguered Kingdom. The war seems have no end.

3, Claude stay allied with the empire, only Kingdom left for the empire to be taken, arguably the best ending for the empire.

do not know what are conditions though, maybe are related to the death/survival of Byleth & Arval.

Interesting. IMO, idk why they have different versions of the endings when they all end in a cliffhanger anyway. Guess they wanna give some semblance of “your actions matter”?

The is game has me on an emotional rollercoaster man. I just saw the King Awakens cutscene on YouTube. I don’t ship Dimidue, but think their platonic relationship is one of the best in the game. I know you don’t like Byleth, but I do and I ship Dimileth and fucking Shez is stealing their moments; that quip should have been the Felix/Byleth BFF moment. I need to get off the internet.

That cutscene is so cute!!! And yeah, Byleth’s not my favorite, but it’s mostly how the story goes around them rather than the character themself. I actually quite like the whole “emotionless merc grows feelings and attachment to their students” arc, and it’s a shame to see that none of it is here because of OC Infinite the Hedge-merc

#three hopes spoilers

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semi-imaginary-place · 5 months

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random fe3h tips

On classic a few characters have plot armor like Byleth, the Lords, and some of the retainers in certain conditions but for most characters, they become unplayable after reaching 0 hp. If in part 1 the characters will still be seen in the monastery but become unusable in gameplay they will die offscreen during the timeskip. If during part 2 unless they are special they'll die onscreen. Plot wise because of the death mechanic, pretty much no one is written to be plot essential, this isn't a Dragon Age game, there are a few plot decisions depending on the route but for the most part you are on a train ride and nothing is stopping the train. Because the game is designed so that almost anyone can die, no one besides the lords and Byleth is plot critical, so no one else is super involved in the plot but the in house students get lines in the cutscenes.

There is no story effects to recruiting, you are on a one way ride. The one real change is recruitment specific unique battle dialogue. This is a Fire Emblem thing from back when there were only battle maps. Getting the unique dialogue is for hardcore people as getting the dialogue is essentially giving yourself an extra goal for the map so most people don't bother to get it all, also it can be tricky to get. As for who to recruit just go with whoever you like best. You should be playing this game 4 times at least so you will eventually play everyone. Lords as can never be recruited onto different routes, some other characters have restrictions so you can not get every character or every supports in 1 playthrough. FE3H was always meant to be played in multiple playthroughs, don't try and do everything in one playthrough. That said my best recommendation for recruits is to go for people who have supports with the Lord and retainer. For Blue Lions this is Dimitri and Dedue so go check who they have support with that are outside of the Blue Lions.

Paralogues can be route locked and lords are always locked to a single route. Some recruits show up in cutscenes but most don't. Some supports have route dependent dialogue but most don't change much or at all. The biggest changes are in monthly monastery dialogue where units will comment on the current or past situations, units will have several months of unique dialogue for each route. Units will also have unique dialogue when facing off against specific enemy units which of course will be route and recruit dependent.

3 Hopes is like a nice side dish it complements 3 Houses nicely but doesn't stand on its own merit. The writing quality is similarly good but the gameplay is completely different. I enjoyed the story and found that it added to 3 Houses. Try the demo and see if you like it. If you don't like the gameplay or don't like the price you can always watch a playthrough on youtube or something. Three Hopes really does remind me more of an expansion pack than a whole separate game. Hopes does not stand alone, you miss like half the story if you haven't played Houses first, it complements and enhances Houses but it can't exist independently of Houses. Hopes doesn't end and for an expansion pack that would have been fine as it'd tie into the main game's story endings but it doesn't work when the devs try to make Hopes its own separate game. And its a shame because I do think the writing that is there in Hopes is pretty good and the what if scenarios it presents are very interesting. Ideal scenario is having played all 4 Houses routes before staring Hopes, but as long as you've played at least 2 you'll get a lot out of Hopes. Please note that Azure Gleam the blue lions route in 3 Hopes is based on both AM AND SS.

The best dancer is the character you aren't using, your most useless unit, so whatever character you never use that should be your dancer. A dancer is primarily dancing not attacking so high damage characters like Hilda and Lysithea are wasted in dancer since they are better off killing enemies.

#fe3h

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kendrixtermina · 3 years

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It REALLY annoys me when ppl single out Edelgard as the one who ‘needs the MC’.

Edelgard carries through her plan wether Byleth is there or not; She’s just less lonely, can do more stuff like she actually wants to, and may escape without dying in the process, but she was fine with being an unsung hero/dying for her goals & her goals are at least partially accomplished (slitherers & Rhea removed from positions of power, more competent ruler); If she wanted to escape alive Dimitri & Claude would probably have let her go. But she got what she wanted & went out on her own terms.

Likewise, Claude can survive everything and even ‘win’ in both AM and CF. (what he wants is a more stable Fodlan, a ruler interested in peace with Almyra and to get the Alliance out as unscathed as possible, & he mostly gets that. Slightly less so in Silver Snow.) It’s just that in VW he is much more successful, he gets all the answers he wanted & was able to grow a bit less cynical.

The one who really crashes & burns without Byleth there is Dimitri. He’s not really acting out of values or a plan but just reacting to his emotions & misguided sense of duty & only in Azure Moon does he get to a point where he is doing deliberate action that actually produce the results he wants/truly cares about.

And don’t get me wrong: That is in part ‘cause the deck is really stacked against him both through the chaos in his country & his personal situation, and like, I get that it’s part of the appeal; AM is supposed to be an underdog story & a lot of the catharsis comes from finally giving the poor guy a break. (and Dedue, too! ...and Gilbert I guess but he’s not typically the one ppl are excited about)

And i mean, needing/accepting help is only human.

But like, maybe Edelgard has a few moments where she’s really glad to have someone to tell her doubts to, and because she’s very self-critical once you get to know her & has kind of been in doubt about her own humanity since the procedures she’ll underestimate what she might’ve done on her own.

But... have you even SEEN Claude’s support chain? It’s ALL gushing. In Dimitri’s case it’s more in the plot cutscenes, and veeery blushy too (as Dude!Byleth/Dimitri shippers correctly point out all the time) I’d say that Claude’s mindset is actually changed very profoundly. In Edelgard’s case she tries to convince/recruit you the whole time & you need to explicitly choose to join/back her (twice!) to even unlock her route. There isn’t actually a single scene where Edelgard wants to do some drastic thing & Byleth talks her down from it (unlike in Azure Moon which is filled to the brim with such scenes)... instead you get the A support where they’re both mutually jelly at each other’s stronger points. Besides in the dialogue there’s all this emphasis on how she’s finally found someone who measures up to her as an equal, they’re evenly matched in the SS reunion cutscene, she’d designed as an obvious foil/rival with similar powers/background & basic personality as Byleth etc... whereas with Dimitri you stay in the ‘mentor’ role the whole time.Uunless you marry him but then you’re defs the Big Spoon despite the actual sizes. (Claude meanwhile is explicitly the mastermind post timeskip; Byleth works for him & he’s trying to subtly bring them around to his more enlightened way of thinking & tip them off about Rhea)

So why is Edelgard singled out? Could it be... tits... XX chromosomes... nah, these days everyone knows that Gender is actually in your hypothalamus. Or is it just that phenomenon where ppl don’t want to see ppl they think of as enemy carricatures doing normal human things? Imma be charitable and assume it’s that.

Corollary: Claude gets sort of the reverse treatment with ppl pidgeonholing him as “the always chill one” who “does fine on his own” & downplaying his arc in Verdant Wind. Granted, he’s the one who has living parents that were ostensibly positive influences, but he had a super fucked up life too & it affected him deeply as well. The man probably sleeps with a knife under his pillow, ppl. Like he plays a lot more defensively & opportunistic on the other routes, & laments not cracking the mysteries. He always had that hidden side to him that’s actually idealistic dreamy & even romantic but he doesn’t let that out until he grows to have more faith in VW.

#fe3h #fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem: three houses #three houses #claude von riegan #khalid of almyra #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #edelgard von hresvelg

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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

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I did it! Finally fucking did it! I 100% the support log for 3H….Holy shit, that took longer than I was expecting, lol.

(Long rant, so heads up.)

I came in thinking “Oh they finally time-locked the supports, so I don’t have to have the damn cursor mocking me every time I open the menu like in Awakening and Fates, hurr hurr”. No no no no no. At least for Awakening and Fates, it was on my dumb ass for pressing the S-support and saving when I knew I shouldn’t. First off, if they wanted us to regain supports for Byleth in NG+, why the heck are supports for characters like Edelgard, Rhea, Dorothea and Lindhart locked? I don’t mean time-locked like the post-TS supports in a regular playthrough, I mean deadass “you can’t buy this, period” locked. “Oh it’s because you haven’t advanced that far in the story yet”. I can buy post-TS supports for the other characters, what makes El and Rhea exceptions?! The only thing that would be lost is that I don’t have to replay their entire route to get their S-support twice. It’s not like there’s enough differences between Bylad and Bylass to warrant the supports being locked, none of the characters specify a specific gender in their dialogue, and as far as different models go, changing models during a cutscene is coded into the game, so that should be no issue.

After going through the monastery option enough times, the hubworld is in this weird limbo state where it feels like it was made specifically for Byleth’s benefit (faculty training, recruiting party members, etc,) but the rest of the party seems to benefit from it instead (Instructions, Motivation points, etc). The Explore vs Battle options just don’t mix well, which feels like poor design choice. You can focus on auxiliary battles to raise your party’s level, but at the cost of potentially missing out on more party members. You can instead focus on the monastery to recruit party members, but at the cost of Byleth falling behind due to splitting activity points between recruiting and faculty training, and being in the monastery means less time grinding for levels. This isn’t as much of a problem in NG+, but if a game needs NG+ to lessen a design problem, then that’s more of a sign to me that the idea itself needed more ironing out.

As far as using the monastery to raise support points goes, the hubworld definitely needs a revamp. The only (good) options available are Meal Time and Choir Practice, with the latter being limited to once per week and the former making me think that the monastery must eat their own weapons to survive due to how fucking scarce food ingredients are. Getting meat and fish isn’t too big of an issue so long as you have enough money, but produce might as well be an urban legend. There were too many times where I had 60+ fish/meat, but produce was at fucking 1. I get that they wanted to be “realistic” in having seeds grow once per week, but if it’s at the cost of a gameplay element being nigh unplayable, then some more thought needs to be put into it. Sothis is a goddess of life and time, maybe her powers allow Byleth to make plants grow faster. Just something to make this section actually playable.

The final thing I wanted to talk about when it comes to the monastery is that, for some baffling reason, it is entirely possible to lock yourself out of key events like S-supports or being able to choose CF, simply by skipping to the end of the month. I’m not sure why this is a thing. It’s not like the game was designed with speedruns in mind (I mean, it is possible to beat a route in an hour, but fuck me if I ever succeeded in that), and nothing happens like a prompt popping up that you have to explore the monastery during that month or even limiting your options to just Explore (which the game has done before). This is especially weird for the quest in getting Jeralt’s ring (how to access S-supports), since Byleth is supposed to be sad in this month, so not being able to do seminars or Byleth being undeployable during auxiliary battles would make sense.

The option to choose CF is even worse though, because at least for Jeralt’s ring it’s a Red Quest that doesn’t allow you to finish exploring unless you complete it. For Edelgard, however? A dime-a-dozen quest prompt you can entirely look over and skip. No prompt by the game, no indication to talk to Edelgard, nothing. FFS, Rhea’s tea time quest was given more thought. At least her quest marker is a unique color.

(End of rant…sort of)

…So anyways, that was my experience with the game, lmao. Now you or someone else may be thinking, “nonnie, if you had this many problems completing the game, why did you bother?”, and the answer to that good question is…I’m not completely sure, lol. I know there’s more than one reason why, so bear with me here. I know part of it is due to sunk-cost fallacy (“I’m already this far into the game, I might as well fully complete it”), but I think a bigger reason is because I knew ahead of time that the routes were so similar to each other that there was little point in having a route split to begin with (except for CF, but who gives a fuck about that?). Despite all of my bitching, I do really like 3H even if I admit that it’s my least favorite FE game that I’ve played so far. I guess a part of me just wanted to like the game more despite my issues with it.

Now that I think about it, maybe the main reason was for fear of future mainline games. People are fear to like whatever part of a game that they wish, but I do think that 3H introduced some fundamental storytelling flaws that I’d rather not see repeated in the future, with me focusing on 3 in particular: 1) The Monastery, 2) Route Splits and 3) Byleth.

Aside from what I already talked about in regards to the monastery, if we are going to get another hubworld in the new FE title, have it to where it doesn’t conflict with how the rest of the story is presented. Is it better to simply tell us that the Western Church is xenophobic in an easily skippable side quest early on, or is it better to show us? Enemy Western Church NPCs going after foreign party members like Dedue or Petra more aggressively and calling them “animals” or the like, the map having Duscari NPCs locking themselves indoors for fear that the Western Church will persecute them, things of that nature. Is it better to tell us that there has been civil unrest in the Empire and the citizens revolting against Edelgard, or is it better to show us? Enemy Adrestian Civilian NPCs, assassins specifically going after Edelgard in a map, maybe one where a large farmland has been stripped bare. Things like that.

I’d rather do away with the Persona-calendar/Monastery hubworld, but if they are here to stay then they need enough content in it to keep the player engaged for 20-odd chapters, because there isn’t enough content in Garreg Mach to even hold up 12 chapters. Speaking of more content, if there’s going to be another route split in the next title, then there needs to be enough differences in the routes that actually warrants having a route split. Fates already did this well in having the route split be early in the game, along with the plot and story maps of each route being different, you could even skip to the route split moment on subsequent playthroughs, so 3H’s approach in having to play the same 12 chapters 3-4 times just felt like a massive downgrade. Playing multiple routes should feel rewarding rather than tedious, is what I’m trying to say.

Finally, and most importantly, I know that no one at IS is reading this but on the off chance that someone is - please, for the love of God, do not make another blank-slate/self insert main character like Byleth. Or at the very least, don’t have them be the focal point of the story, it’s a big reason why AM just works better than the other routes. For a game like FE, “self-insert” and “protagonist” goes as well as oil and water. Now, out of those three flaws listed, the Byleth one is what I’m hard set on. The monastery and route split flaws, my opinion might be flexible within reason, but the Byleth one…not so much, lol. If we really do get another self-insert doll for a main character, that alone is going to make the next game a hard sell for me, because seeing all the praise Byleth got (and has been getting) makes me fear that IS is going to take the wrong lesson from this and think they don’t have to put effort in making their protagonist anything resembling an actual person and their audience will still lap it up. It would be one thing if I just hated the character, but I don’t. I’m disappointed, which is even worse.

…With that said, it’s still better than whatever the heck Cap’n’Crunch is doing. Okay, rant over. For real this time.

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I agree with a lot said here! But I do have a few disagreements, though they’re mostly my opinion than anything else lol

And this first one is probably like, extremely unpopular given how much shit I’ve seen flung at this aspect of 3H, but like… I actually really like the Monastery? Like yes, absolutely, it should have done more to not shelter the player from how bad the war is and it should change more with the world instead of being in this mostly limbo state where apparently seasons don’t real. I definitely also have those complaints, but to me, the Monastery was fine for the most part. A lot of the issues you brought up, like supports and Faculty Training and supplies for eating, weren’t a problem for me almost at all. My only real gripe is with how hard it is for Byleth to get training in Flying, Mounted and especially Heavy Armor without NG+ unlocking weapons ranks, since they don’t have access to Weekly Chores. I do believe I still managed to recruit everyone while only unlocking C in Faith on my Maddening playthrough of GD, but it certainly wasn’t easy. But I feel a lot of the problem people have with it are on subsequent playthroughs where they’re trying to do things like 100% any aspect of 3H, which yeah is gonna exacerbate the issues tenfold. Cuz like, while those three weapons ranks I mentioned are hard for Byleth to raise, on Normal mode you have unlimited auxiliary battles to help with all the other ones.

Like, I wanted to get Claude’s Dex to the max amount right? Just cuz I felt like it. And in doing that I found out just how tedious it is to get levels once a unit gets to a certain point, just cuz while Normal Mode gives you the Retreat option that lets you keep exp so you can drop a unit down on a yellow spot and get a decent boost in exp… you can do that like, twice or thrice on a story chapter. Once if it’s auxiliary (and not the freebie one). And that’s if you even have internet. And using the greenhouse to get Ailiell Pomegranates was a pain because they weren’t really guaranteed even if I used nothing but the right seed - doing that is more consistent, but not always, and I usually only got one anyway. It was annoying! But I was also doing a specific thing that’s gonna heighten the flaws in the system that I never would have noticed - didn’t even notice - unless I did that. The flaws are still there, don’t get me wrong! The Monastery definitely still needs improvement, battles still need to be a little more streamlined for future playthrough, but the flaws can seem a bit bigger than they are once you do certain things outside of a casual playthrough, know what I mean?

But, for example, when replaying 3H on hard mode and looking to recruit everyone after my no recruitment run, I didn’t come across any dilemma over “recruitment or Byleth being good, pick one.” That was the run my Byleth was usable, in fact - my first blind run that was no recruitment (save for Shamir) had my Byleth be pretty much completely useless while literally everyone else was fine. Also never came across problems with supplies for cooking (or at least not any big enough to comment on). So like, while these (and the above stuff) can certainly be problems for players trying to do everything everything in 3H, at least from my experience I just haven’t come across them. The monastery itself definitely needed a better story implementation, but yeah. I could’ve just been lucky tho lmao

I don’t mind how they implemented trying to get on CF at all tho lol. If you’ve been playing the game like it suggests you do - supporting characters and exploring the monastery there’s no reason for players to have missed getting on CF. If players wanted to ignore one of the biggest aspects of the game I don’t really feel that bad for them when they miss out on very achievable things. Plus, CF’s requirements are nothing in terms of FE’s madness when it comes to getting on a route. It may be more specific than any other route, but like I said, playing the game as the game tells you to would naturally land you in it (the only thing that might be a bit unfair is that I think if you talk with Edelgard at all that month you have to decide right then and there, and then the whole month is lost. Kinda ass).

Binding Blade, for example, requires you to do specific things that few first time players would think to do in multiple, random chapters in order for you to get the best ending. With absolutely no warning as to when these chapters happen and what to do in them. And some of these requirements are not fun lmao, I’d prefer how they did it with CF than with how they’ve handled ~secret~ stuff before personally

Pretty much agree with everything else though! While 3H is actually one of my more favored games in the series, I’ll be the first to admit that its storytelling is in dire need of improvement. Having the story and lore of the game just be spat out in lore dumps and this or that NPC just isn’t that good. Or if they are going to do that, at the very least give some visuals to go along with it! Imagine how much impactful Rhea’s story would have been if it was in a visual format, like CGs and/or a cutscene. It still would be an info dump, but at least we can see for ourselves how horrific the Red Canyon was for her! And I do not want another avatar in whatever next mainline game we get, personality or not. We’ve evolved past the need for self-inserts that all the characters Just Like lmao

But thanks for sharing your thoughts!! And sorry that it took so long for me to get to answering ;w;

#submission #anon #exqueuese me princess #but hey I found the og submission at least!! for some reason it got thrown in like the middle of my drafts?? weird lmao #but yeah overall I do think 3H could've done with some refinement for later more intensive playthroughs #and on the other hand I get why they didn't immediately think of them if that makes sense #also lol yeah the base game is infinitely more fun that whatever Cap'n'n doin' lmao

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faroreswinds · 4 years

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Data Mining: Prologue - An Inevitable Encounter

Going through the data mining, I thought it would be logical to go through the chapters... well, chapter by chapter. So of course, we will be starting out with the basics... the Prologue!

This will be split into three type of sections: The Events, as seen in the Event viewing, Explore, AKA the monastery dialogue, and Battle, the chapter that takes places in the chapter. Not all chapters will have some of these sections.

As a disclaimer, I will not be looking at every piece of dialogue- rather, I will be showcasing the dialogue that looks interesting or is important overall.

If you want to see more of this little analysis project of mine, please check it out here. Please remember this is a work in progress and posts will be continuously updated as I come across more information.

Please feel free to update me on anything I missed or whatever, and I will try to include it in the posts if I feel it is important/ cool.

The Events: Before Battle

Before the events, there is a short opening movie that gives us a little taste of mystery and takes in Imperial Year 91, over a thousand years before the game takes place. The scene takes place in a large battle, where we are met with Nemesis, an imposing figure. We see his extremely dangerous power that goes beyond human limits (extreme strength, fire from his weapon, able to land from extreme heights), etc. The scene eventually pulls back to show the size of the battle and ten glowing dots, signifying 10 of the 12 Relic bearers.

Of course, at this time we are unsure what this entirely means, but for the new player the editing would imply at least ten other powerful warriors similar to this terrifying man.

Finally, a woman called Lady Seiros enters the scene and eventually engages with Nemesis in battle. The two have a long, tough fight, before finally Seiros sucker punches Nemesis to the ground and pins him down. She asks him if he “remembers the Red Canyon”, of which Nemesis’ eyes go wide at the question, before Seiros proceeds to brutally stab him to death screaming that he took everything she loved from her. Once dead, Seiros takes his sword and holds it close to her cheek, saying that “he’s gone now, Mother”. A new player would be confused, but she is, of course, referring to Nemesis’ slaughter of her people at the Red Canyon, and that his sword is made from the bones of Sothis, her dead mother.

Following this, we go through a quick series of stills that shows the history of Foldan (but only with context, of course) that somewhat reminds me of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We are first shown an ape, an ancient city, a woman standing over a city of people (Sothis), a sea battle (perhaps, but boats for sure), a modern skyscraper, then- blink and you miss it- a bright red light over the modern buildings, perhaps implying the destruction of the modern times due to the war between Sothis and Agartha.

To finish off the cutscene, we are then introduced to a young girl with green hair and pointed ears sleeping on a throne, who then wonders how you got here and is surprised by your visit.

Then, there are two events that take place before the Prologue Battle:

Dreams of a Throne

A Skirmish at Dawn

Dreams of a Throne is a short and basic event. We the player, as Byleth, speak to Sothis, who is unnamed at this time.

There is not much to say about this event, other than it is clear that Sothis is a) not a mortal and b) not human.

She also has no patience for any of your tomfoolery, and you must answer her question with “I am a mortal”.

She then asks for your birthday (surprise, it’s the same day as hers!) then says it all feels familiar before taking another nap.

The event then shifts to A Skirmish at Dawn, where we meet a new face: Jeralt, Byleth’s father. He is waking you up from your dream about Sothis, preparing to go to another job in the Kingdom.

You bring up your dream with Jeralt, but you can choose what to tell him: whether you dreamed of a massive battle, or of a young girl. Telling him that you dreamed of a massive battle gives you information that such a battle like that hasn’t taken place in over three centuries. As for the girl, he’s never met such as one as her, and Byleth have mentioned her before. Byleth has also mentioned a battle before as well.

This tells me that the opening scene is more than just setting the story for the player, but an actual dream being had by Byleth.

It is then a mercenary comes in and tells Byleth and Jeralt that there are three young people being chased by bandits, and Jeralt decides to help them and the battle begins.

By the way, I just want to make a special note of:

That Jeralt and Byleth were not alone and actually have a band of mercenaries, even if they aren’t playable.

Battle- A Skirmish At Dawn

A Skirmish at Dawn is a simple, introductory battle. The title indicates the battle taking place in the early morning, as dark turns to light, similar to the events from the opening scene when Seiros fights and defeats Nemesis. I will not be getting into the symbolism of the light and darkness in this game since there is a lovely analysis already done by electricprincess96 pertaining to this topic, but I still wanted to point it out nonetheless.

There is not too much to say from the dialogue battle. It’s the first battle after all. The most interesting thing is how surprised everyone is that there are mercenaries in the village.

Kostas also notes Byleth’s blank stare:

The Events: After Battle

After the events of the battle, when you defeat Kostas, there is another cutscene before the next event takes place. Kostas jumps up, attacks Edelgard, Byleth defends her by putting himself in harms way he is a mercenary, right? He does know how to fight without just jumping into harm’s way like that, right? and then time suddenly stops. Sothis, rightfully, gets mad at you, then yells at you for trying to get her killed.

I won’t be getting into what this may mean in this post, but will eventually make a post focusing on the relationship between Sothis and Byleth for a closer look.

Sothis then says Byleth does not know the value of his own life, then proceeds to say she will guide him. She then calls herself “Sothis” or, “the Beginning”.

And at last, we move to the next event:

The Girl on the Throne

An Unexpected Reunion

The Prince, the Princess, and the Heir

Sothis clearly has amnesia, and her memory is slowly returning. This is also reflected in another line.

I also want to point out her line “Should I force you to leave?” which seems odd. Perhaps this dream space is a real place, outside the realm of the reality we know?

After that, we finish the scene with Sothis sending Byleth back, and saying this line:

Of course, a new player would not know what this means, but she is referring to Byleth’s Crest of Flames. It is interesting that she seems to know this, despite having her memory issues.

I also want to point out her magic circle she makes just as she sends you back.

The worlds are kind of hard to make out, but essentially it says “The goddess always lives in heaven and Foldan. It is watching over us. I am the mother of all living beings. As support of all mindful things.” Feel free to correct me on this.

Now we get the last small cutscene of the prologue, where Byleth saves Edelgard once more without being killed this time.

Just as a small reminder, Edelgard can be see holding the dagger Dimitri gave her years ago, but a new player would not know this at this time.

Now that the battle is over, we meet Alois and the Knights of Seiros enter the scene and we move into the event An Unexpected Reunion.

We get a bit of Jeralt’s history here from Alois:

And then a little insight into the Knights of Seiros:

Which is... well, it makes the Knights seem strong and very capable, a force to be feared.

And finally, we get the last event: The Prince, the Princess, and the Heir (I find it interesting that Dimitri’s title comes first, rather than Edelgard’s).

This is a pretty heavy event since it is a chance for the player to get into the three lords a bit.

In the beginning, we are talking with Edelgard.

More history on Jeralt, and Edelgard seems pleased to know that Byleth was unaware that Jeralt was a captain.

Claude explains that they had been doing training exercises nearby when the bandits attacked, and he ran away and the other two followed. We then get a nice little bit on insight into their world views:

(Little extra tidbit, but Dimitri actually tries to recruit you first.)

We also get a little insight into their nations (as well as how they view it... sort of).

Almost done. The final interesting dialogue to look at is Byleth’s impressions of the three young lords.

And then finally, they are on their way to the monastery.

And that’s the end of the prologue!

Let me know if there is anything else interesting to look at or if I missed something!

Next: Chapter 1- Three Houses

#Prologue Data Mining #Data mining #3H data mining

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ac-liveblogs · 4 years

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Anyway, it’s interesting that Edelgard has her classmates state their loyalty before explaining her side of the story.

It’s also interesting how vague and manipulative her explanation is. “Rhea is evil, you saw this because you saw her get mad at the professor for disobeying her, and then she turned into a dragon! And if she’s a dragon, she can... fabricate miracles to force a false narrative! And if she can do that, she can bully and control the nobility! And if she can do that, she can kill everyone that defies her! Believe me, because you saw Rhea get mad and turn into a dragon!”

She relies on their shock and the thought of “wow, dragon! Rhea was keeping that a secret!” to push a “well, if Rhea’s keeping that secret who knows what else she’s doing!” without actually providing any concrete examples or proof.

No, “remember when [x] happened?” or “Rhea’s been doing this specifically” because those examples don’t really exist. When did Rhea force a noble to do anything? Was it when the Church put pressure on Duke Gerth to hand over the Aubin Relic? Except they sent Constance to negotiate, didn’t they? And that noble only handed over the relic out of gratitude - it sure seems like he could’ve kept it!

When did Rhea annihilate anyone that defied her? Was it when there were literally thieves attempting to rob the most sacred location in the monastery, defiling tombs as they did so? Was it when they executed Christophe (who tried to assassinate Rhea?) Was it when she sent the Knights to take down Lonato’s rebellion only after he started it, instead turning the other way despite knowing of his hostility (and that his son tried to assassinate Rhea)?

Was it when Rhea attempts to return the Lance to the Gautier family, and clearly follows their decisions about what to do about it? Was it when she got annoyed that Byleth was openly defying her despite uh... them being her employee?

When are we supposed to have seen Rhea actually concretely doing something bad? When did the class see it? Or are we just so programmed to assume the Church is evil in media and found Rhea a bit weird and overbearing that we took Edelgard at her word?

Is “dragon bad” really a good enough selling point? Because at this point, that’s all we’ve got!

If we’re taking the cutscene of Rhea turning into said dragon as the truth, none of Edelgard’s classmates were close enough to hear what Rhea said about Byleth. The crutch of Edelgard’s argument really is “angry dragon bad” and the fact that everyone just buys it is... kind of wild.

....well, excluding the students that outright say they’re only here because of Byleth. Recruitment is a fuckin joke mechanic

#ac plays 3h #again rhea is not some innocent waif completely hard done by here #but the villification she gets is wild #also i'd love to think edelgard is being vague and manipulative #and we're supposed to think critically #but it could also just be shitty writing #story of edel's life

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superfluousstuckupitude · 5 years

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WARNING: MAJOR FIRE EMBLEM THREE HOUSES (FE3H) SPOILERS BELOW. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Disclaimer: If this seems to be all over the place it's because it probably is lol. I'm writing all of this on the fly with very limited info, this is just me kind of theorizing.

Note: For like the 0.01% of people who might get offended because they think I'm attacking their house or whatever, stay out of your feelings. Let's remember it's a video game, it's not that deep and I thought this might be a fun little discussion. If you agree that's fine, if you don't that's fine, let's just be respectful.

I've seen some people say there is no true route in FE3H and I was along the same train of thought. However after a few conversations with a friend of mine and some research of my own I'm starting to wonder if that line of thinking is correct.

I was under the impression that it was the same over arching story. The only difference was that it was being told from the point of views of the different houses, however, this seems to not be the case. The story is relatively the same up until Edelgard turns on the church. After that depending on which house you chose the story will drastically change, to the point where the final boss fights aren't even the same (hell even time skip Dimitri looks different). To me that says there is a "true" route you were supposed to follow. My and others proposal is that you get it in the Black Eagle (BE) route.

Now hear me out. Usually in games that have a true ending or route in this case, there's usually extra effort required by the player. Take Crash 2 and 3 for example, all that's required to beat the games is to get the crystals and beat the levels. However if you collect all of the box gems (and yes this takes effort) you will get to see the true endings of either game. Now bringing it back to FE, there seems to be default routes a person can find themselves in depending on their house choice. The default for either the Blue Lion (BL) or BE will cause the player to side with the church with Edelgard being the final boss, with the Golden Deer (GD) seeming to be the neutral path. Does the GD house have a final boss? To whoever reads this and played that route let me know. Anyway, however, there is what people are referring to as a "secret" route (which isn't so secret if you ask me because I got it my first try along with other people). That route being you having the opportunity to side with Edelgard and the empire. You have to meet a certain criteria for the game to even give you the option to do this:

1. You have to get her support rank up to a C+.

2. You have to talk to her during the month of her betrayal.

-A cutscene will trigger and she will ask you to accompany her to see he father. The game will tell you this decision will drastically change the story (the majority of the text will be in red so you know they're not playing)

3. Go with her.

4. After you fight her in the Holy Tomb the game will present you with another game altering choice: to kill her or protect her.

- Note: this choice WILL NOT happen if you choose to not go with her to see her father. The only choice you have is to kill her or do nothing, either way you will side with the church.

5. Choose to protect her and you will side with her.

The BE house from what I gathered upon investigation is the only house in which this kind of choices happen. Or at the very least the only one that has two, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Like I said these choices don't even happen if you don't meet the criteria for it, criteria the game doesn't even tell you is a thing. I just kind of stumbled upon it because I already had my mind set on ranking up Edelgard and I dedicated at least one day off every month to go talk to everybody. Everybody went into this game with a different mind set of what they wanted to do so I can see how someone could miss it, well I can and then at the same time I can't.

Let me explain. I was surprised to find out some didn't know this route was even a thing. But as I said prior considering it's something that has stipulations and the fact that cutscene is framed as normal conversation and not one you're forced into. You have to actively rank Edelgard's support up and seek her out to make the cutscene trigger, so that's how I can see someone missing it. Other the other hand it's fairly easy to rank up people. Just give people lost items, gifts, fight beside them in battle, etc and they're as good as yours. Also the map tells you who you've have and haven't talked to and will even tell you specifically where they are. Plus it's not really even that big so it'll take no time at all to explore all of it.

Now on to my somewhat crack pot theories for why I think Edelgard's route is the true route:

In the beginning the game has you specifically saving Edelgard and what are the odds of her, Claude, and Dimitri meeting them here for all of these events to happen? Also let's point out the scene of Byleth giving Edelgard the eyes LOL. Also while I'm at it Edelgard is the only character who seems to genuinely depend on the main character. If you choose to side with the church from what I gather she essentially loses her mind. If you side with her she stays reminded of why she's doing what she's doing. She like so many real life people can be very laser focused on achieving their goals, to the point they forget the reason why they doing it in the first place. The main character is what keeps her grounded and if you choose to side with her she even tells you as much. Even during the 5 years you were gone the hope that you would come back is what kept her going.

Dimitri on the other hand goes of the deep end regardless. Hell if you bothered to talk/recruit Felix he will warn you many times about Dimitri and even the main character senses darkness in him at the beginning. Speaking of which anybody notice there was a bit of a difference of the main character's first impression of each house leader, specifically their first impression of Edelgard versus the other two? I'm not gonna go into it because this is getting long enough, I'm sure it's out on YouTube somewhere lol.

ANYWAY, I'm rambling at this point LOL, so yea tell me what you all think.

#FireEmblemThreeHouses #FE3HSpoilers #edelgard

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kisant · 4 years

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Miklan was not disowned for lacking a crest. He was disowned for repeatedly trying to murder his little brother. Sylvain was named his father's heir, but Miklan remained a privileged nobleman after that. It's unclear why Edelgard believes a noble system based on primogeniture is inherently fairer than one based on crests, as both are more or less accidents of birth and crests at least offer someone tangible advantages.

Cont! “Incidentally, the idea that Sylvain is one of the more sensible CF recruits is more fanon than anything based on the game. Sylvain views crests as useful tools necessary for border defense, not metaphysical concepts upheld by theology. He hates it but understands it, as he says. In CF, he isn’t happy with invading Faerghus or the Alliance, and complains about the way Edelgard and her “idiot sidekick” conduct the war. Like most recruited students, on all routes, he’s just there for Byleth.”

I know that some people feel more comfortable as anons, but man, do I wish you’d answered this in one of the reblog chains or even as a response, because I have made so many different meta posts about this topic recently that it would have been useful to have the specific thing above for reference. I’m hardly going to bite anyone’s head off unless they are an asshole to me first, even if we disagree about stuff.

If the info about the specific reason Miklan was disowned was in one of Sylvain’s supports, I must not have unlocked that conversation yet. Most of the Miklan things I’ve seen in-game have been from his mission and the paralogue about his bandits. So I knew that he was abusive towards Sylvain, but didn’t know that he had straight up tried to kill him. That is a far better reason to have been disowned that simply not having a crest, which was what the game implied in the Conrad Tower mission. Miklan was born without a crest and Sylvain had one —> Sylvain being named heir and Miklan disowned because his parents didn’t see any inherent value in Miklan. I recall Sylvain saying that Miklan hated him for his crest, but I don’t remember him adding “and by the way, he tried to kill me and that’s why our parents disowned him” or something of the sort in that mission. He simply lets you know that there is no lost love between them and to not worry about him having to fight his brother.

Sylvain may see crests as useful in battle, but he hates the effect his had in his life. He hates being valued first and foremost for his crest, that people see him as a walking crest/crest-baby making machine and an easy ticked to riches, and that they pretend to like him without knowing the first thing about him because of all that. He’s resigned to having to uphold the responsibilities that come from his position, but he’s getting back at his situation by living the good life (philandering and being irresponsible overall) in his youth and in the academy. So he had plenty of reasons to agree with Edelgard’s ideals if recruited in CF.

Furthermore, Edelgard did personally explain her reasons for the war in depth to her allies and gave them the choice to leave the empire’s side without repercussions before her attack on Garreg Mach (even if the only ones present in the cutscene were the Black Eagles, it’s reasonable to assume that everyone that was recuited into the class was there as well, just not shown because, well, cutscene reasons), and they’d also had seen Rhea’s true face, so all of the CF recruits had those reasons to fight the war as well, it’s not just because they love Byleth and would follow them anywhere despite their own convictions.

If that was the case, plenty of people would have left (like Flayn did) during the five years Byleth was assumed have been a casualty of the battle for Garreg Mach. So it’s reasonable to assume that something other that game mechanics was keeping them on the imperial army even after Byleth’s disappearance and presumed death. At least if we are analyzing the game from a story and character based perspective instead of a simply mechanical one (that recruited characters stay in your party no matter what, and even that has Flayn as an exception).

And yeah, he does makes comments about how it is regrettable that they have to invade Faerghus (can’t recall about the alliance, since the alliance recruits were more involved in that), but he didn’t seem as torn up about it as, say, Ingrid or Felix were. It’s not that Sylvain doesn’t care about betraying Faerghus in CF, far from it, it’s that among the kingdom recruits he’s among the ones who have the most reasons to support Edelgard’s cause despite wishing that the war against Rhea didn’t involve having to invade his homeland. I think he was also one of the ones wishing that Edelgard and Dimitri could sit down and talk diplomacy like mature adults instead of letting their weapons do the talking for them, too.

Also, Edelgard doesn’t agree with primogeniture either. She’s just as mad about people like Miklan not even being considered for leadership just because they lack a crest as she is about incompetent people like Caspar’s older brother being designated heirs just because they were the firstborn. The system she wants is a meritocracy in which the person that is the most skilled gets the relevant position. For example, the best researcher as the head of a research team, or the best general or military strategist for Minister of Military Affairs, and so on. That’s the criteria she followed for her own successor as Emperor as well.

#fire emblem three houses #Anonymous #edelgard von hresvelg #sylvain jose gautier #fe3h meta #answered asks #kisant liveblogs three houses #azure moon playthrough

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years

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FE16 Golden Deer Liveblogging

Chapters 16-18. Just like the Lions route, until it isn’t. There’s also some Dimidue content here, but not enough for its own post.

Chapters 16 and 17 are virtually identical to those chapters for the Lions apart from which army you’re controlling. Ferdinand still shows up to die on the Great Bridge, with a generic taking the place of Lorenz. (Oh, and I’d forgotten to say last time that Ashe appears in Ailell. I read somewhere that he can be recruited somehow here, but I didn’t see it.) The big battle at Gronder Field is a fair bit easier with the Deer; the Lions are less mobile and I believe fewer in number, with the only thing that surprised me being Sylvain and Ingrid coming from behind with reinforcements a few turns in.

Keeping Dedue alive is fairly simple in Chapter 17 since you only have to defeat Edelgard and Dimitri to end the chapter, but I’m not entirely certain I got anything special out of it? In any case, I did so by rushing Edelgard’s lines as fast as possible to get close to taking her out before the Lions start moving. Once they move it looks like Dimitri and his two boyfriends’ AI is specifically trained on Byleth (...why?) unless that’s only because mine was about 30 levels below the rest of my army and cowering in a bush because I’m not using him. It’s therefore not too hard to leave a few units behind to rush Dimitri on his way north as soon as Edelgard is down.

Chapter 18 at first looks like it’s going to be a retread of the Lions’ Chapter 20, the showdown vs. the Death Knight in Fort Merceus, but then the plot happens and you’ve got a bunch of Almyran NPCs led by Nader backing you up while everyone other than Claude assaults the fort from a different starting location. Then the DK surprises everyone by retreating, turning it until a rout map unless you can kill him before he leaves. On that plot point, see below.

Claude’s paralogue is technically the first new map I’ve seen on this route, although it’s really just the story map for the Sreng desert one used for skirmishes. It’s not completely awful to navigate once you realize that there’s a path of normal terrain circling the central structure, which was very helpful when trying to grab the loot from a bunch of thieves determined to commit suicide by dragon. The Wind Caller/Macuil wasn’t particularly worse than any other major monster boss I’ve yet encountered, and he was great for dropping little worldbuilding hints. It’s funny to me that the other house leaders’ paralogues target major military installations while Claude goes on a field trip to another country for information.

Character/Story observations

Let’s start with the Dimidue. The reason I say that I’m not sure that sparing Dedue accomplishes anything is that he retreats from battle and the post-chapter cutscenes play out as if this had happened anyway. Hilda describes Dimitri charging after Edelgard alone before collapsing and getting run through by Imperial soldiers. Claude then asks after Dimitri’s vassal whose fate was unknown - and then it cuts to Dedue alone, saying this: “Your Highness! Your ambitions are my own now! I...I will bring you Edelgard’s head... I swear it!” This is indeed the route where these two go full Quan/Finn, and although Dimitri’s offscreen end lacks the poignancy of Yied the results are no less tragic or less gay. And because Dimitri has no son to be fueled with righteous anger, Dedue has to carry within him not only Finn’s unbroken loyalty but Leif’s rage. I know he’ll be making a reappearance in a later chapter, too, so this isn’t the end for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the anons I’ve gotten on the subject were really about the chapter where you kill Edelgard.

I made a point to defeat Dedue first before rewinding time to see what would come of it, and actually I think that adds even more to where their relationship is/was on this route. In this version of events it’s left ambiguous who’s leading the mysterious Faerghus army until Dimitri appears on the battlefield, and apart from the bit about Cornelia’s coup right after the timeskip no explanation is given for why Dimitri is his one-eyed feral self. Unless the game says otherwise, I’m going to assume that events played out as they did in the Lions, with Dedue rescuing him from prison but needing to sacrifice himself and inadvertently leaving Dimitri to wander alone as a vagrant for five years. This Dimitri is as such violent, contemptuous, and obsessed with revenge, and when his allies die in battle his “mourning” quotes are nothing but ellipses (Sylvain), dismissive grunts (Mercedes), or their names (Felix, Ingrid). For Dedue, though, who protests that he can keep fighting after being defeated, Dimitri says this: “Shut up and retreat. You must live, Dedue.” So I was right about how this storyline plays out; per his Gilbert support, Dedue has to have his prince command him to live for him to have not charged to his death alongside Dimitri. Also, way to have all that homoromantic co-dependence flow both ways to have even a feral, death-seeking Dimitri insist on Dedue’s survival while all his childhood friends (and Mercedes) are dying around him and he barely spares them a word.

Anyway...let’s talk about lighter things. Not many supports left for me to get; I finally finished off Catherine and Shamir’s line, and it is blatantly romantic down to marriage propositions. As a counterpoint Claude’s last support with Shamir is one of his more romantic and one of the few endings that sees him eventually abandon Almyra. Flayn/Manuela dances around prostitution - good thing Flayn is secretly hundreds of years old, right?

Monastery tidbits: an NPC soldier confirms that the Fódlan year begins with the Great Tree Moon - the April equivalent. This means that numbering the months to match up with the Gregorian calendar was solely so the player could give Byleth a real world birthday. So worth it. I’ve also noticed that there’s a line of minor quests for supplies and skirmishes in Part 2 that are the same across all routes, with the only difference coming from who’s handing them out. For Edelgard it’s Hubert and for Claude it’s Hilda, but for Dimitri it’s Gilbert as yet another thing Dedue misses out on by being dead by default.

In a rare bit of honesty that’s kind of hilarious, Claude admits that he’s using Byleth for their connection to the church, now as a means of smoothing over tensions within the Alliance.

I complained about how the Alliance’s presence and behavior at the Gronder Field rematch on the Lions route has little explanation, and unfortunately the way the Kingdom remnant is handled is only slightly better here. Claude’s forces don’t try allying with them first because their movements have been erratic, and then later because it’s foggy at Gronder...fog that doesn’t stick around for the map itself, thankfully. Dimitri may be feral and unable to be reasoned with, but what about Gilbert or Rodrigue? The rematch is a big marketing moment, but having the Kingdom and Alliance fight each other instead of unifying against the Empire feels like a contrivance either way.

One thing I think Three Houses does really well compared to earlier games is that there’s less of a sense of what I think of as arbitrary chorus characters: people aside from the leads who show up in most dialogue scenes for the protagonist(s) to play off, who get to be there because they have plot armor or are NPCs so they can’t die in battle and therefore don’t need to be written around. FE16 goes out of its way to include every character in your army at one point or another in story cutscenes, sometimes even in plot critical ways. For example, after Chapter 17 it’s Lysithea who provides the plot hook to bring Those Who Slither back into the story by sharing her traumatic past. Meanwhile in Chapter 18 it’s Hilda who comes up with the ruse of invading Fort Merceus disguised as Imperial soldiers...as well as a gag about dressing Claude in drag that’s mildly amusing but goes nowhere.

Oh, right...I need to talk about the DK, and Those Who Slither’s nukes. The DK retreats from Fort Merceus because his side has “javelins of light” that totally obliterate it in the same way that Arianrhod gets obliterated in Edelgard’s route. As this happens in a cutscene I assume the DK doesn’t die there if you defeat him, as he does in the Lions route. If it seems odd that I’m not dwelling on the fact that the enemy now has anachronistic nukes, it’s nothing compared to Claude, who takes the opportunity to have an extended discussion on racism. Lorenz takes him to task for allying with the Almyran general Nader, and Claude reveals his plan to solve racism with imperialism. As silly as that is, he’s still deft (and manipulative) enough not to do so by revealing his own heritage but rather by dragging Cyril into the spotlight as an example of an Almyran among their own forces. Cyril protests, but that’s just how Claude rolls.

Part of Claude’s big speech references the Officer’s Academy bringing together people from many different backgrounds, among them the princess of Brigid and a man of Duscur. You know, an Imperial hostage and the vassal/boyfriend of the mentally unstable crown prince of Faerghus, because those are completely normal circumstances for adding diversity to the student body. It’s also strange to me that he considers Duscur as outside Fódlan. Ethnically and culturally distinct from Faerghus, yes, but Fódlan is a continent with three independent political entities that also includes the peninsula on which Duscur rests. To use a real world comparison close to how I imagine the relations in question, this would be comparable to saying that the Basque people do not live in Europe because they are an ethnic group distinct from the people of France/Spain. I’m clearly putting more thought into this than the game does, but still.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Spoilers

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langwrites · 5 years

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Lang Plays Fire Emblem: Three Houses

So a while ago I said I was planning on playing the story routes in this order: Blue Lions, Black Eagles, Church of Seiros, and then Golden Deer.

The Golden Deer made a liar out of me.

So, here’s an approximation of What Happened During Verdant Wind.

So many spoilers below the cut, you guys. I do a lot of route comparisons.

Okay, I’ve been staring at the “which house do you want” selection screen for an embarrassing amount of time.

This shouldn’t be hard. I had a plan.

But no.

I clicked the Golden Deer, just like that. What the fuck, Claude. I blame you.

Immediately upon talking to this rop of students again, I can feel the difference in the social group from what the Lions were like. The latter were really a bunch of noble kids around their prince, and they felt really tight-knit. Classic Fire Emblem starter crew.

The Golden Deer is the fucking Scooby Gang.

First impressions of individuals:

Raphael, thank goodness, is the one character who absolutely has his shit in order. Sure, he’s bad at book work and thinks everything comes down to MUSCLES, but all of his emotional issues are handled by the time he arrives at Garreg Mach. He’s the brightest of sunshines.

Ignatz needs some more confidence in his art, and also I want to see his painting of Seiros. Now, if only both of his offensive stats and growths weren’t incredibly bad.

I was so close to making him my dancer. Just because he sure as hell wasn’t gonna be useful anywhere else.

Lorenz! I don’t like him. His haircut is a monstrosity.

Leonie! We are going. To be. Besties. Even though the timing of your support conversations are incredibly bad.

Marianne no please don’t be sad everyone loves you

Hilda is the greatest enabler I have ever seen. By which I mean she enables other people to do all her work for her.

Lysithea is going to have the last word with God. And especially he Death Knight.

And finally Claude! Teamwork makes the dream work, so obviously meme work does the same.

I’m sorry.

PRE-TIMESKIP

Mock battle! Marianne’s great and I love her and also the only healer oh god.

OKAY. I have access to New Game+ bonuses. What do I do first?

Immediately crank the Professor Level stat to max to avoid ever having to run short of activity points again.

Next, raise all skills I can’t easily get to at least Rank D+. HEAVY ARMOR IN PARTICULAR.

Third: Boost supports with people whose support ranks are an absolute pain in the ass to earn. Lookin’ at you, Rhea.

Also, put glasses on Byleth (named “Yuri” for this playthrough). Glasses are the bomb. I am the evil genius.

LEVEL GRINDING TIME.

It’s a lot harder with Blacksmith access being story-locked, but I can do this!

As a direct result, every single battle after this point is a complete curbstomp in my favor. Because the grind don’t stop.

I broke a lot more weapons than last time, though.

I will befriend Leonie and Ferdinand if it’s the last fucking thing I do. I will befriend everyone, and I will not get timeskip-locked out of supports! >:(

Ferdinand was my first recruit. Oh dear.

Okay, there are like five born cavaliers in this game. Leonie, Ferdinand, Lorenz, Sylvain, and I guess Dimitri if you’re on the right route.

Last time, Sylvain was a great paladin and a decent Dark Knight before he started getting one- or two-stat level ups for like thirty levels. Similarly, Dimitri was great until all his ultra-secret-awesome promotions didn’t use a fucking horse.

Contrast Leonie who, despite sitting out 99% of the game out of spite from me getting locked out of her support chain, went to endgame with a ten-level deficit and still rocked.

Ferdinand didn’t count since I failed to recruit him last time and he died. These two facts are directly related.

I didn’t use Lorenz at all; I recruited him to keep from having to kill him later.

This time, Lorenz straight-up sucks, Sylvain did the terrible level dance for like the entire game, and Dimitri’s not recruitable.

Contrast, again, Leonie. Her support chain with the player character is hot garbage, but she plowed through most of the game as a mainstay of my team and made it to Bow Knight first out of anyone.

Bernadetta and Ashe as Bow Knights don’t even come close to being as durable as she is, except for Ashe’s absolutely bananas Resistance. 29?! WHY?!

And Ferdinand is also awesome. His only real weak point is Resistance, but he doesn’t need it. He dodge-tanks everything, is faster than Leonie, and has two Saints’ relics he unknowingly stole from Seteth.

He still talks in MLA format, though.

I started putting off recruiting people so I wouldn’t have to level-grind them up to par with the rest of my team.

But if these people wanna join, of course I’m saying yes.

Lord Lonato’s rebellion and Miklan yoinking the Lance of Ruin feel way less relevant on a Golden Deer playthrough than on a Blue Lions one. None of the Herd really know who the hell these people are.

I say that despite having already recruited Sylvain for this playthrough and deploying him in the relevant level. He wasn’t treated as there by the game’s preamble cutscenes.

At least the Holy Mausoleum stuff feels more...handled? Claude actually asks questions about rebellion and about the “assassination plot,” where Dimitri didn’t really.

OKAY SO there’s this whole plot thing where Flayn goes missing for a month. With the Blue Lions, this is handled like a manhunt. Dimitri’s seriousness about the issue rubs off on everyone except Sylvain, and Felix actually correctly identifies the culprit almost instantly. He doesn’t know he’s done it, though, because basically everyone is just throwing out accusations. Manuela is the real MVP.

CONTRAST THE DEER. The very first meeting reads like a Scooby Doo episode, when they’re piling up clues and throwing out suggestions like the gang of goofball teenagers they are. Claude’s got this group running like Persona 4′s Investigation Team. None of them are jaded or frantic, they’re just doing this.

Why did Rhea entrust the investigation to a herd of teenagers.

Anyway, the rest proceeds as usual.

I don’t know why the game tries to drop the same set of hints for each route. “OoooowoooooOOOOoooo, your house leader might be the FLAME EMPEROR.”

The Flame Emperor wears heels. And is still too short to be either Claude or Dimitri. Especially Dimitri. Who the fuck let this kid get so tall.

The only real result of all this bullshit is that my wyvern-riding sniper of doom is not available during the first map where Yuri personally beat the Death Knight into the ground.

Which, by the by, was hilariously cathartic.

It doesn’t exactly matter, since the only unit who can make real use of the Dark Mage and Dark Bishop classes is unrecruitable, but bragging rights.

Remire Village’s drama is about as bad while playing as the Golden Deer. One of the foreshadowing cutscenes, though is excellent:

Claude actually finds a book that depicts The Immaculate One before its debut, only to have it confiscated by Seteth and learn that it wasn’t a library book at all; it belonged to “Tomas.” Like, all of his suspicions--which he shares with the player--start lining up. Censorship! Monsters! Sword of the Creator! What the hell is going on here??

Dimitri’s version of the cutscene involves him being caught investigating Lord Arundel by the player and Sothis. Which--since his route doesn’t meaningfully deal with the Morlocks faction aside from steamrolling them as incidental opponents--seems kinda useless.

Kicked the Death Knight into submission again out of spite.

Sylvain was useful! Mostly because I had him sit there and distract the incidentals while Claude and Lysithea cleaned house, but still!

Claude is the only lord character who seems to understand that the transforming Morlock faction probably needs to be taken more seriously. For the remainder of Part One, no one does so.

Rhea you’ve got some ‘splainin to do.

Marianne’s my team’s dancer this time. She’s a sweetheart. She seemed happy to be asked and to pursue the lessons, and being able to use Physic is a good trait in someone who’s nearly always going to be waaaaay behind the rest of the group.

Dad-stabbing happened.

Again.

Boop boop Solon’s dead.

Again.

Dear diary: I learned the definition of irony and set the Flame Emperor on fire.

I kid.

But Claude took her out in one completely overpowered shot, because crits are a thing, Flame Emperor class skills don’t reduce damage enough to survive it, and his Dex stat is through the fucking roof. And he was on a wyvern at the time because fuck it, why not.

Claude’s reaction to all of this is a minor letdown compared to the fully-rendered cutscene in the last route.

This would become something of a trend--taking out OP bosses with unexpected critical hits.

I didn’t expect to like Lorenz and now I do. How.

This is hilarious simply because he seems to be the only character that Mercedes hates. What the fuck, man.

Once again, Edelgard invades! Once again, I drop someone unexpected on her head!

Not really. It was Yuri.

Yuri does the timeskip shuffle and we’ll see everyone again after a nap.

FIVE YEARS LATER.

Aw, Claude was waiting for Yuri to show up. Adorable.

The post-meetup fight is actually harder than it was in the BL route, despite excessive level-grinding. This is due to three factors:

Claude is automatically on a wyvern, meaning that he has inherent class vulnerability to archers on a map with at least five of them. And less range than they did, for some fucking reason.

Lorenz and Ignatz started out on the same corner of the map and both of them are shitty offensive units who could barely kill a mage between them. (Neither of Ignatz’s offensive stats cracked 20 for another thirteen levels.)

I don’t have Ashe and his personal skill Locktouch, and nobody started with a Chest Key or Door Key, which meant I had to keep various enemies alive long enough to steal all of their stuff. And the enemy item drops came up one short of the number of chests on the map. I want my stuff, dammit.

LET’S MAKE A SCENE.

Randolph, as a boss in Verdant Wind, did not get any better at figuring out when he’s outmatched. Therefore, I killed him with Raphael again.

At least he straight-up died this time.

Claude didn’t even get to set the damn place on fire.

Ingrid is turning out to be way better of a unit this time than she was last time. She’s a little slower, but a lot stronger.

FELIX, WHERE THE FUCK WAS ALL THIS STRENGTH HIDING LAST TIME. YOU’RE TEN POINTS AHEAD OF THE GUY WHO HAS STORY-BASED SUPER STRENGTH.

AND SPEED.

Iiiiiiiiit’s JUDITH!

She only shows up on one map in the entire Azure Moon route, and that’s a damn shame. She’s so cool in Verdant Wind.

A lord-class character who isn’t also a Lord! WOO!

Also her spies are better than anybody’s apparently.

I am choosing to believe that because Ingrid’s family is related to Judith’s, her badassery in this route is the direct result of meeting her distant cousin and absorbing badass radiation.

There’s something funny about having to pull one over on Lorenz’s dad to get anything done. The Great Bridge falls not to power, but Claude baiting Count Gloucester’s entire army to be somewhere else. (FEAR THE DEER.)

As a result, Ladislava dies alone. (As opposed to taking Ferdinand with her due to plot shenanigans.)

Lysithea and Ferdinand’s paralogue was really quite sad, for all that the only named guy who died was deeply unsympathetic. Ferdinand’s dad was an asshole, but he wasn’t the asshole for this particular scenario, and now both of his parents are gone. :(

Felix...hasn’t heard from his dad in a while. Worrying.

Oh, and Caspar’s uncle is still dead, in case we were keeping track of that.

Dorothea’s happier with Ferdinand alive. She did an impression of the Gatekeeper. :3

Gronder Field! FUCK.

I delayed playing this chapter for two solid days because I already knew what was gonna happen. Specifically: Edelgard gets injured and evacuated, and Dimitri drops of exhaustion just in time to get run through like ten times by the Emperor’s rearguard.

I eventually got my shit together enough to do the thing.

Marianne, Raphael, and Ferdinand went after the Kingdom army first. Leonie and Felix hung back and then reinforced them after taking out the archer on the central hill.

Claude killed everyone in the center of the map, which meant Edelgard set the entire hill on fire and if Bernadetta had not been recruited she would’ve burned to death there on the spot.

Ahem.

I sent Yuri to clear the entire left side of the map by herself.

She succeeded.

Raphael KO’d Dimitri with a luck Gauntlet crit, got blasted down to half health by a Warlock, then plunked ineffectually at Dedue until Marianne used her Levin Sword to sort him out.

Ferdinand killed everyone else on that side of the map.

Claude once again got the kill on Edelgard with a lucky crit, after Yuri had killed everyone else (up to and including the Demonic Beasts) single-handedly.

And then the plot moved on. Hilda’s account of Dimitri’s death was awful, Dedue’s reaction was worse, and off we go to punch Edelgard’s teeth in.

Again.

Annette’s dad is probably dead now.

Felix’s, too.

(I THOUGHT WE WERE DONE WITH THE DAD-STABBING.)

FOOOOOORT MERCEUS.

No matter how many times I think about it, Claude’s Almyran army reinforcements only make so much sense. How the hell and fuck did he manage to sneak an entire foreign army across a whole country to help with one battle?

But hey, they’re here, and Claude almost admitted the reason why he could do that. And the arrow greeting between him and Nader was cool.

(Spoiler: On top of being the Alliance’s leader, he’s also the crown prince of Almyra!)

The Death Knight had the gall to run from my army.

Yuri punched his ticket for the third time, which was not the charm.

And then Fort Merceus took an intercontinental ballistic missile and suddenly defeating the fort’s garrison feels a lot less triumphant.

Spot the miscolored eyes in this cutscene!

Welp. Fuck it, we’re off to Enbarr. Time to also punch Hubert this time! What a change of pace.

Eyyy, it’s the Enbarr map. I totally forgot to bring Seteth and Flayn along to check out the opera house, despite a whole bunch of characters talking about how they totally wanted to check that place out at some point. No room for deadweights in a map that has SO MANY ARCHERS.

Managed to get the special dialogue between Ferdinand and Hubert, and now I’m sad again.

Killed Hubert with Claude.

And because this is a two-part map, we immediately run off to chase down Edelgard. Due to the player army not doing a really weird 180 in the middle of the plot to kick Cornelia out of Fhirdiad, she didn’t have time to turn into a giant demonic thing! She just has WAY TOO MANY MAGES.

Strategy: Forget what Door Keys are, split the team by Avoid rating, and go to town.

Claude nearly died thanks to a critical mass of Gremories and Mortal Savants (and still, what the fuck is that name), but Dedue-as-guest-character didn’t, so I count that as a win! His defense was so high that the Giant Demonic Beast couldn’t even scratch him.

Claude, Petra, and Ingrid all having Alert Stance as a skill means dodge-tanking is hilariously easy.

Also, Ingrid was supposed to just take a chunk out of Edelgard’s HP bar for the final assault and ended up crit-killing her on the first attack. With a bog-standard silver lance.

Weird as the situation turned out, I guess that means one of Dimitri’s friends really did avenge him after saying they would. Even if Dedue was the only one who had a special cutscene about it.

We rescued Rhea! And the characters being happy about it doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. I want answers, same as Claude, and being forced to RP Yuri being oh so worried about Rhea’s safety felt incredibly disingenuous.

Claude actually yells at her over the “...” she seems to think is an explanation. THE TIME FOR SECRETS IS PAST.

WHY DID ALL THIS SHIT HAPPEN.

WE’VE BEEN AT WAR FOR FIVE YEARS.

A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE DIED HORRIBLY FOR BASICALLY NOTHING.

Incidentally, this is why I didn’t end up playing Edelgard’s route as planned. Her logic for kicking two other sovereign countries in the balls felt incredibly self-centered.

At least Catherine’s happy. Same with Alois and the rest of the Church crew.

They are soon going to be not as happy.

I’m filling out the ENTIRE support log before endgame. I have absolutely no idea what characters are going to end up together as a direct result.

The last conversation? Seteth and Manuela’s A+ support!

Because so many of the support conversations are romantic at A/A+ level, I guess we’ve managed to turn this ragtag army into a polyarmory.

Oh boy, Thales sure is a sore loser.

I say, as though I didn’t kill EVERYONE he knew over the course of an hour and also split his skull open under Seteth’s axe. His racism would have keeled his ass over before death set in.

That sure is a ICBM.

GOD DAMMIT RHEA, THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A Q&A SESSION AFTER THIS.

WHY DOES EVERYONE WHOSE JOB IS EXPOSITION UP AND DIE.

Meanwhile: THE UBER-DEAD PEOPLE.

Claude, your route is batshit. What is this genre anymore?!

I wanna point out that, despite seeing Rhea/Seiros do the dragon thing, the player character never told Claude what the fuck that was about. I feel like one of the first things I would have done after the class reunion would be going, “By the by, did anyone else notice the fucking dragon?!” WHO IS ALSO THE POPE???

Bah.

ANYWAY. Looooong-overdue exposition time!

I notice that Rhea didn’t out Seteth or Flayn, which was nice of her.

Claude, she can turn into a fucking dragon. I don’t think immortality is that far from being plausible.

GOD DAMMIT NEMESIS, CAN YOU FUCK OFF FOR TEN MORE MINUTES.

Uuuuuuugh fine, fuck everything, I’m putting your head on a pike.

CLAUDE, THE SWORD OF THE CREATOR LOOKS LIKE A SPINE.

OF COURSE IT’S MADE OF BONES. A BUNCH OF THE HEROES’ RELICS MOVE ON THEIR OWN!

The frantic music is not helping.

Time to kill a bandit king.

“My flabber is completely gasted by now.” Okay, that made me laugh.

Nemesis’s boss mechanic is pretty neat. To kill him at all, you need to kill all of the minibosses in the level and take down his friendship-based-plot-armor.

Or it would be, if I didn’t already make a habit of steamrolling everyone else on the field before tackling the boss at the end.

CUTSCENE.

Cutscene lesson: “Fuck honor duels.” It’s time for CHAIN SWORD LIMBO.

Claude, your bow shoots LASERS. SINCE WHEN.

Also getting kicked across the field by a dude twice his size didn’t seem to actually affect his mood much.

Awww, Yuri smiles now. Adorable. :D

AND THAT’S A WRAP.

Pairings: Yuri/Sothis (mostly to get them out of the way and see what everyone else would do), Claude/Petra, Raphael/Marianne, Catherine/Shamir, Lorenz/Mercedes, Ashe/Annette, Felix/Sylvain (bad end; the former straight up disappears), Seteth & Flayn wander off, Manuela/Dorothea, Lysithea/Linhardt (again), Leonie/Ignatz, Ferdinand/Bernadetta, Caspar/Hilda, and a couple of people are alone. Cyril gets to actually be a student after the story’s done, though!

Whew, that was fun. Gonna mix up the pairs a bit next time I play through the endgame and see what happens.

#fire emblem three houses #Lang plays Fire Emblem: Three Houses #Lang Plays #spoilers #long post #fire emblem

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sage-nebula · 5 years

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As I mentioned earlier, I finished my Golden Deer playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses today, and I have some complaints. Since the complaints are spoiler-heavy, I’m going to go ahead and put them under a cut.

My biggest complaint is something I’ve seen a lot of people talking about, but that I had hoped was an exaggeration, and that it’s that the Golden Deer route (and presumably the Blue Lions route) is so much longer than the Black Eagles route. (For those who don’t follow me, the Black Eagles Strike Force (a.k.a. Crimson Flower) route was my first playthrough.) This on its own wouldn’t be a problem, except the length feels somewhat artificial. Rather than needing more chapters to defeat the Empire and close what the story that Claude and Byleth had started from the beginning, the additional chapters are tacked on by way of a letter from Hubert telling Claude about Those Who Slither in the Dark, and then Zombie Nemesis rising from his grave and needing to be fought. And setting aside the utter ridiculousness of Zombie Nemesis and his Zombie Ten Heroes (as well as that Tron-looking city Those Who Slither in the Dark supposedly built with what I can only assume is the same technology that gave them actual missiles, none of fits with the otherwise medieval setting and is pretty ???), all I can say is . . . excuse me?

That should have been part of Edelgard’s story.

Like you have no idea how indignant I am about this. It’s not that I’m upset that Edelgard’s story was shorter (though yes, it would have been nice to have the same amount of chapters for her story as well). It’s that I’m upset that Those Who Slither in the Dark were directly combated in Claude’s story, when Claude had fuck all to do with them. The only tie he has to them is through Lysithea, who waited 5+ years to tell him or Byleth about what was done to her, and even then, Claude understandably treats it as a tidbit of interesting information, without a whole lot to go on from there. Claude doesn’t have any personal ties to Those Who Slither, he has no reason to care about them outside of, “oh, they might try to kill people maybe.” And even then, that only really pertains to Fodlan itself; Claude’s story was all about opening borders and letting other nations in, and almost doing away with the concept of individual countries altogether. Claude’s goals aren’t directly in line with Those Who Slither; he has no reason to know of them at all. The fact that he only found out about them because of an extremely tacked on post-mortem note from Hubert highlights that all the more.

But Edelgard does. These are the people who experimented on her as a child. These are the people who tortured her ten siblings to death right in front of her. These are the people her uncle is aligned with, the people who used her father, the people who she feels she has no choice but to work with, the people who murdered her love interest’s father, and so on and so forth. Those Who Slither are a prominent and present force in Edelgard’s route from the jump. And she makes it clear, time and again, that working with them makes her trauma rush to the forefront every time she has to see one of them and that she plans to take them all out once Fodlan is taken care of, which means that it would make the most sense for the army to move on to Shambhalla as soon as Rhea is taken care of on the Black Eagles route, rather than having that reduced to an epilogue.

But that doesn’t happen. Instead, we get a footnote saying that they took care of Those Who Slither in the epilogue, while it’s the Golden Deer who get to actually do the deed. This, despite the fact that the narrative had to twist itself into a pretzel and do something completely implausible to get that knowledge into Claude’s hands (because that note was out of character for Hubert for multiple reasons I won’t bother to get into now). Why this is the case, I don’t know. Part of me wonders if it was a time constraint, but this game had already been delayed once before, and in any case, that doesn’t explain why they didn’t put time into including Those Who Slither into the Black Eagles route to begin with, rather than putting them into Golden Deer first and then tacking on an epilogue note in the Golden Deer route. I’m hoping that perhaps the DLC chapters that have been promised will include a continuation of the Black Eagles route that lets you deal with Those Who Slither on that route, but at the same time it’ll be pretty terrible if we have to pay to get the resolution to that route that should have been included from the get-go.

All of that said, the lack of sense of not dealing with Those Who Slither on Edelgard’s route despite the fact that she was the one with the most reason to go after them isn’t even my only reason for being mad about it. I’m also mad about it because it would have been good for Edelgard to learn that while she was not wrong about Rhea needing to be taken down, she was wrong about what kind of person Nemesis was. I’m not taking everything Rhea said about Nemesis and the creation of the Heroes’ Relics in the Golden Deer route at face value, because Rhea lies a lot and can’t really be trusted. But it’s clear that Zombie Nemesis was not at all a good dude. At the end of the Black Eagles route, Edelgard still believes that Nemesis had his story warped by the Church of Seiros entirely and truly was a King of Liberation. If she was confronted with Zombie Nemesis, who only wanted to destroy and murder with impunity, she would have realized that no one on either side was completely trustworthy, that there were wrongs on both sides, that Nemesis wasn’t actually a hero and neither were the other Heroes that the Church and nobility pretended were great all along (the latter of which she would have no problem with since she wanted to dismantle the nobility anyway). It would have been additional great development for her, but she never got it because the story was cut short. (And before anyone argues, “But Byleth couldn’t take on Nemesis without the Sword of the Creator, which she can��t use anymore after killing Rhea because the Crest Stone vanished from her heart,” remember that the entire point of taking down Rhea was that humanity could stand on their own and did not need deities---or the power of deities---leading them around like puppets or tools to be used. Byleth taking on Nemesis without the goddess’ power and winning anyway because she has Edelgard’s support would have fit with the theme of the entire route and would have been a far more fitting end, not the least of which because it would have shown Nemesis that his murder of Sothis and her children to gain more power was completely pointless.)

So anyway, as you can tell, I really hate how Those Who Slither were taken out “in person,” so to speak, on the Golden Deer route rather than the Black Eagles route. It made absolutely no sense and leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. That aside, I really hate how pro-Church and pro-Rhea Byleth was forced to be in this route (as discussed here), and I also really hated how Edelgard’s death scene was handled in this route, too.

Setting aside the fact that it feels kind of forced that the three House Leaders can’t come to work together post-timeskip (at least in the case of Edelgard and Claude; Claude refuses to join the Black Eagle Strike Force if spared for vaguely defined reasons, and while I get that Edelgard is stubborn, she herself says that she knows that her goals are very similar to Claude’s, so like ??? her refusal to team up was very forced), I really, really dislike how angry they made Byleth look during the animated cutscene where Edelgard dies. Don’t get me wrong, Edelgard’s speech was completely heartbreaking, and it’s clear to me that she has feelings for Byleth on that route as well. The fact that she’s pushing Byleth to kill her, not in an angry way, but in a “do this, it’s what’s best for you” kind of way just absolutely ruins me. But Byleth is glaring at her through it all, especially at the end, and to kill her before she’s even finished speaking? What the fuck, honestly. I know I’m biased as an Edeleth shipper, but my feelings do come through as I’m playing a silent protagonist, but they didn’t in this case. I didn’t agree with Byleth’s expression or emotion there one bit, just as I didn’t agree with all the “OMG MUST SAVE RHEA” that I was forced to pretend I wanted to say leading up to that. I think the writing there was sloppily handled, and that the player’s actual feelings toward the characters wasn’t well accounted for at all. (This isn’t even mentioning the fact that I refused to attack Edelgard with Byleth in the first place, and instead attacked her with Claude, so to see Byleth deliver the killing blow anyway . . . god, I really hated it.)

All in all, considering all of the above and the fact that there are only three students (Claude, Hilda, and Lysithea) in the Golden Deer House that I actually like, and one (Marianne) that I think is okay, while the rest can just go chill in the trash bin for all I care, it’s safe to say I won’t be touching this route again. I’ll dearly miss Claude and Hilda (gonna recruit Lysithea first thing so I won’t have to miss her), but it’ll be worth it not to have to sit through that nonsense again, for real.

At least the Crimson Flower (Black Eagle Strike Force) route is still almost perfect.

#fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem: three houses spoilers

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semi-imaginary-place · 5 years

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fe3h blogging 2 because the post got too long

Edelgard Claude foiling. Both see that the world is wrong and that motivates them to make it better. Claude listens to people, Edelgard listens to herself. Claude reflects and introspects, Edelgard doesn’t.

I was going to write more but I realized I was just bashing Edelgard so I stopped. Anyways, the Gatekeeper has a backstory??? a younger twin brother and they’re from the empire?? Also wow Edelgard is REALLY into you (the light in the darkness pft)

I also want to comment how the Church of Seiros unlike some other fantasy religions really is like real life historical (and current) religious organizations. There’s a mix of people from the non believers but there to help, to those that believe this is the best way to help people, to those looking for power, to the people who are there because its a way to make a living. I want to make clear though that Sothis/The Goddess is dead and she can only act a little bit through Byleth. Before the game The Goddess has NO influence on Fodlan. Anyone praying is doing nothing in terms of reaching The Goddess.

Hilda: Tell me what I’m thinking about right now.

Ferdinand: Hmm... You want a snack.

Hilda: I DO want a snacc ;) ;) ;)

supports: Ashe Dedue, Sylvain Felix, Ingrid Dimitri, Hubert Ferdinand, Petra Claude, Marianne Ignatz

3h totally fooled me with the hair colors. I’m too use to JRPGs have rainbow haircolors so I think nothing of it but in this game the white/green hair are plot significant.

Somehow related to dragon shenanigans(white/green): Sothis, Lysithea, Flayn, Edelgard, Byleth, Rhea, Seteth

Plausibly a normal color with weird undertones: Ignatz, Shamir, Petra, Felix, Lindhardt,

That inexplicably JRPG colored hair: Bernadetta, Hilda, Caspar, Marianne, Ashe, Lorenz

Ch14 of Crimson Flowers has made me unfathomably sad. Claude hold himself so tightly, closed off with high walls. He always has a face on, doesn’t break composure. But in ch 14 in the face of losing his dream you can see the cracks in walls. And Claude may be closed off but he is in no way cold hearted or uncaring, he cares so much and you see that as the Empire gains ground. That battle is one of the few glimpses of Claude. Whether he is killed or spared, both are sad. The cut scene after Claude is spared is seemingly lighthearted and a tonal contrast to the serious battle right before it. Without knowing Claude better it seems like a breather before more plot happens, but knowing Claude that scene really breaks my heart. In contrast with the moments of honesty during the battle, Claude’s social mask has snapped right back into place, hiding all of his pain. Claude’s dream meant all to him, being able to walk side by side with his friends in a new world, and that dream just took a devastating blow. Claude is by no means dishonest during that scene, but knowing how devastated he is on the inside yet forcing himself to hold it all together... He’s sad and now I’m sad.

The Insurrection of the Seven is fascinating to me. Just because people keep saying different things about it. Was the Emperor seeking to consolidate power for the throne and the nobles stopped him or where the nobles always seeking to turn the Emperor into a puppet ruler? To my limited knowledge I think for a while Emperors had been losing power. Enough so that the experiments on Edelgard and her siblings could not be stopped. He then tried to expand his power and was crushed.

Crimson Flower is quite interesting. Edelgard and Hubert are walking a fine line balancing the church and the Agarthans. The Empire appears unified but its a shell for the Agarthans and Edelgard is betting on the appearance of that shell.

Wow Dimitri is surprisingly sane and not feral in CF. Does the purple clouds in Dimitri’s death CG remind anyone else of the S support CGs?

Lysithea and Edelgard can bond over shared childhood experiences and being short

Can you imagine Claude, Hilda, and Sylvain as a squad. They would radiate such chaotic energies just standing next to each other that Nemesis would leap out of his cyberpunk containment pod and start dancing to leek spin

How is Dimitri clean shaven post timeskip?? Most people in the grips find it hard to be functional and do basic tasks and your telling me he meticulously shaves everyday? I'm calling it. Dimitri is trans and can't grow a whisker

So the brits (and w europe really) went mad for tea and got it through colonization of india. Where does fodlan get its tea?? Its mostly too cold unless you want to convince me theres an extensive breeding program for hardy cultivars somewhere. Dagda?? We know coffee is imported. hot take: the empire started a war to get more tea

I dont talk about dorothea enough. I almost chose BE just for her. She hates nobles and its great. The voice acting is top notch too. Dorothea-Ferdinand c support is memorable to me because of the voice acting. The line delivery was so good. Especially the " I hate you " from Dorothea. She's so savage. She was the only one I considered S supporting after intsys robbed me of claude. Didn't go through with it though. It always feels wierd romancing fictional characters.I remember how P3 forced me on the harem route and wow that was uncomfortable. Dorothea is kind. I like kind people. She's so full of love (Manuela is the other character overflowing with love), and her compassion extends to everyone. She understands the grief of war. Contrast that to local manlet Caspar. Once he's decided someone is an "enemy" he stops caring. Oh Caspar... All of Dorothea's supports are so good too... Dorothea's backstory can get a little disturbing. She's 18 at the beginning of the game. She began singing with the company at 10 and gained fame at 13. What troubles me his how she talks about how after every show she was innundated with marriage proposals and such. The way she talks about it, it went on for a while, and while sure the letters and stuff could have been from other teenagers, that she was getting all this as a teenager is creepy. In addition, then she talks about the nobles fawning over her and it made my skin crawl. But the worst was that a noble possibly her father was coming on to her . Like Dorothea, I'm with you. Let's burn down the world. Despite the justifiable anger though, dorothea is so full of love. Until the last her heart never turns cold.

Thinking about claude and edelgard. On one hand their personalities, ideals, and ambitions complement each other. On the other hand Edelgard doesn't understand how people work and Claude is a manipulator, guarded, he never lets any one in(edited)Claude can totally read her, but Edelgard reacts poorly to criticism and dissent.... Claude has no faith. Not in his dreams and not in himself. With out a push, he's not proactive. Edelgard charges straight ahead while Claude takes the circuitous path. "Defensive" thats the word for edelgard, she so easily thinks people are out for her. Whereas claude deflects. Both are fuelled by a sense of justice. Edelgard thinks in terms of eliminating enemies, claude thinks in terms of recruiting allies. The point is the the tragedy that they would make great friends! But thats not happening in this universe! Because edelgard's bull headed and claude wont open up!

Watching s supports and anyone notice theres 3 variations on the ring. There 2 silver and green ones. At first I thought small green stone was from people with common origins and big stone from noble. But I just saw saw one with a gold ring.It could be that the character is just that extra. And yeah it is gold is from Ferdinand and Lorenz.

Ferdinand was so obnoxious at first. But hes such a good boy. He does his best. He's trying very hard. Also, existential angst is my jam.

I just remembered theres only 5 saints in the Church of Seiros and does that mean the tome of comely saints has erotica of... like... cihol??? And cethaleann????? Uuuuuuhhhhhh...I dont like my brain sometimes.

so that whole fuss that byleth's mom was rhea's daughter was because tons of "gamers" chose BE first and misinterpreted Edelgard's speculation. When in reality Jeralt was the one who Rhea gifted her crest (seiros) to, extending his lifespan. Rhea then cut out baby Byleth's heart and then replaced it with Sothis's crest stone hoping that Sothis would posses byleth. All we know of the mom is that she was a nun and died young. Flames crest stone joined to Byleth's heart (CF ending cutscene). Rhea placed Sothis' heart in baby Byleth to revive Sothis (VW ch 22 opener). She has done human experimentation on people to revive Sothis before (implication). Seiros/Rhea did so so that Sothis would posses the body (Rhea dialog consistently referring to Byleth as "Mother" or hoping that Sothis will poke through).

The only time Claude’s anger breaks through his composure is with Rhea. This is significant as Claude almost never loses his composure, and this highlights how Rhea in the only person Claude hates. Claude doesn’t hate Edelgard or Dimitri or any of the other people that may kill him, just Rhea.

question about the Black Eagles/Crimson Flower ending: why does Byleth collapse and then Sothis' crest stone break? I mean I will give it a break since its symbolic and thematically significant and all and it was a excellent touch that Sothis' heart and Byleth's heart have literally weaved together. Is reviving Byleth Sothis' last act?? Why did Byleth have to die to begin with though? ... well maybe Byleth didn't die since they didn't have a heartbeat to begin with. So far the writing in 3H has been pretty good though there have been weak spots. I think that CF final scene was put in more because it "felt right" than because it was logical. it fits with edelgard's goals and what the route's been about. its just if you really think about it. It doesn't make sense based on what is already known. I mean crest stones could have other powers but I haven't seen that anywhere else in the game. As for the story as a whole, the main acting forces in the game are Edelgard+Empire, those who slither in the dark, and Rhea+Church. Claude also has his own ambitions, but those 3 are more deeply entwined. Each faction has its own goals and past and a good chunk of the game is figuring out what those are. Its also ironic that GD despite how Claude is not enmeshed in ... that other mess, sheds so much light on the other factions.

The main theme is probably about Rhea since it plays a lot during Rhea scenes and the church is a central focus of the story.

the "M-metal gear?!?!?!" moment will always be hilarious for me. On par with dollar store Hitler

Why is it Jeralt's voice on the map even after he dies?

God Shattering Star: How Many Times Do We Have to Teach You This Lesson, Old Man?

Dawn is a recurring motif in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. “the dawn of a new age” is or such is

Claude, a child loved and lonely

i think blue lions was written first. 1 the two monthly missions that have to do with students’ families are both in BL (Ashe and Sylvain). 2 two fairly important side characters at the monastery are related to BL students (Annette and Mercedes). Chapter 3 actually provides a intro for all the lords in their respective routes. Edelgard’s scene is serious but not especially sad, instead you can feel te fire burning within Edlegard and the scene shows how she’s willing to sacrifice the lives of those under her if she believes she is doing the right thing. Claude’s is actually quite light hearted in tone after the first few lines and it highlights the mystery surrounding him and makes him seem very sketchy. Chapter 3 in Blue Lions though is really sad. Ashe my baby boy. Here there is a sense of tragedy in the post battle scene

oh there is another Claude loses his temper. Its when a bunch of thieves (badly) impersonate Almyrans and Claude is so offended they didn’t put enough effort into the act and that they’re weak.

Major Player Goals

Rhea: revive Mother

Edelgard: take down the Church and crest system

Agartha: vengeance on the Nabateans

Claude: usher in a new age of tolerance and prosperity for humanity

Dimirti: keep afloat???

CHURCH SKETCH AF. Rhea always raised the hair on the back on my neck. I mean even in ch3 the first real mission. We're being used as a personal assassination squad because Lonato threatens Rhea's power. and then she's like. This is a public execution to give an example of what happens when you defy the church. and I was like !!!!!!! let's mentally/emotionally scar a bunch of teenagers into fearing the wrath of the church. Rhea: prosecutor, defense, jury, judge

I remember ranting about revolution and society in fire emblem games before having played this one, and wow intsys made a game for me

Ignatz and Raphael. I must protect both of them. sweet sweet boys. Raphael has the biggest heart and Ignatz just wants to help. Team Protect Raphael's Heart. Raphs is pretty emotionally mature too. he gives warm fuzzy vibes. Ignatz takes on so many burdens and clams up about his own pain. He doesn't place any importance on himself. Let my boy be an artist! Raphael certainly has pain, but he doesn't want a life where that pain rules over all else. Raphael is a force of GOOD I would have love to meet Lorenz's dad. I don't have high expectations of him, but I'm curious. we've heard so many different things about him. And he's one of the major actors of the story. But we also know so little about him.

o both Mercedes and Emile have the Lamine crest. If that came from their shared mother, why did House Martritz fall since she was heir? Possible answer sexism or finances. The other option is that both Bartels and Martritz have the Lamine bloodline. Also, Jeritza is younger than I thought he was Modern Advances in Missile System Engineering Wade and Kruger 7e 2XXX

Schöner, Alexa, and ZaiCheng Jun. "Applications of Dymanic Systems Theory in Autonomous Bipedal Assault Units". Journal of Robotics 18.4 (2XXX): 157-170.

I think I'm hilarious. heh. Imagine though, While digging around Shambhala Claude finds these and everyone is just confused because it looks like their language???? and yet the words! they dont make sense!

I didn’t really care when hubert died in VW, but edelgard's death hit me you know. Because both claude and edelgards ambitions are to tear down the old system. and seeing edelgard in that armor. Its like the timeskip all over again. Part 2 begins and you relize how much all the characters have grown. And while you werent looking edelgard has been going through her own journey. When you fight her shes wearing armor with elements from both the flame emperor and her part 2 outfit yeah edelgard is yikes. i agree with her goals but her disregard for yhe lives under her concerns me. And between her tendency to brute force solutions, those who slither in the dark, and the empires situation, I think she was doomed to fail from the start

When Claude ... half jokes??? that Hilda can grasp his throat, is that connected to how Fodlan's Locket (in Fodlan's Throat) is under house Goneril control?

#Fire Emblem Three Houses #fire emblem #fe #fe3h

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years

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FE16 Black Eagles (Edelgard) Liveblogging

Chapters 15-16. The plot, among other things, explodes.

I was wondering where all the Eagles character paralogues were, and all of sudden come Chapter 15 three of them get dumped on you. Edelgard’s is a fight on the border against Nader and the Almyran remnant. Wyvern riders are unusually overpowered in this game, even as enemies. They’re not a unit type one expects to be so fast. Hubert goes back to the Sealed Forest to save Those Who Slither from their own failed creations. Both of these paralogues play up Hubert’s own talent for slithering in the dark: the first because it’s heavily implied that he poisoned Hilda’s brother so he’d have to rely on the Empire to push back the Almyrans, and the second because he’s been investigating Those Who Slither on the side all the while your army is being strong-armed into doing their bidding.

Petra and Bernadetta’s paralogue meanwhile has been the first map on this route that I haven’t seen before, a heavily forested section of Brigid. Bernadetta’s role there is almost completely random, but it comes together in the end in a way that feels satisfying. The chapter itself on the other hand features a cheap fakeout win condition, thankfully avoidable via Divine Pulse, and another appearance by the OP Catherine.

Playable kills: Flayn and Seteth from the church, Felix and Ingrid from the Lions. Now that the Alliance portion of the story is done I notice that Raphael and Lorenz skipped out on showing up this time, along with Marianne who doesn’t appear in the Lions’ Part 2 either. Actually, I’ve read that she’s the only playable character who doesn’t appear in Part 2 at all unless she’s in your army, with the implication that her depression and/or the dark story surrounding her Crest killed her or drove her to suicide in the timeskip. That’s...something.

I’ve also read that if you don’t recruit Shamir and Alois they show up in Chapter 15 to be killed...and that Manuela and Hanneman only do so on the Lions route in Dimitri’s paralogue for some reason. Weird.

I can confirm that the dark merchant does not sell Dark Seals. He’s only available in the second to last exploration month of Edelgard’s route, so you can’t get much use out of him anyway. Sucks for Hubert, but if I’m understanding correctly how you can buy classes with Renown the next time I use him I can just certify him for dark mage that way and get one seal for dark bishop.

The brevity of this route sticks out more and more the closer I get to the end. Not so much for the story which is moving along at a brisk pace to match Edelgard’s resolve and concrete goal in contrast to Dimitri throwing everyone off with his unresolved personal issues, but for the gameplay. A bunch of my units aren’t going to make it master classes at this rate, and I’m tempted to not even touch Edelgard’s emperor class when it randomly becomes available after Chapter 15 (seriously, her armor just arrives from the capital? Are we timing lord promotions by the speed of parcel delivery now?) because there’s no timing and making her armored is kind of awful.

Story/Character observations

Chapter 15 opens with a bizarre interlude of Byleth coming upon Edelgard in her room at night, and an attempt at humanizing her by...telling us that she draws pictures of Byleth. That’s not even organic Avatar worship, come on. From what I remember her A support is more of the same, so I’m not holding out much hope for her big bi S rank.

Thankfully her two dorky subordinates salvage the character-based charm of this route. Ferdinand pokes a hole in the fourth wall and asks Byleth if they’ve thought about a world in which they chose another house or chose to side with the church, and while I can see the similarities with Conquest constantly dumping on Corrin’s choice this incident is isolated enough that I’m not feeling condescended to. Ferdinand’s A support with Byleth reveals that the first king of Faerghus - you know, the one with the very close *nudge nudge wink wink* friend akin to Felix - had a second very close friend who was just as indispensible but didn’t desire notoriety and so didn’t make it into many history books. Ferdinand compares this to what both he and Byleth are to Edelgard (I imagine this support is phrased very differently if gotten on any other route), but my mind went right to Kris, the shadow Avatar at Marth’s side who got left out of the original game historical accounts. While I believe that Byleth’s ending on Edelgard’s route actually is fairly out of the public eye, in other routes they’re either the archbishop or the ruler of the united continent. Byleth is very much not that type of Avatar who can just disappear at the end because how else could they sleep with the whole cast?

I can’t forget about Hubert either. Apparently he’s the one who gives Those Who Slither their infamously unwieldy name - thanks a lot, Hubie - during his investigations on how to out-evil them. When he’s not doing that he’s engaging in absurdly cute support conversations with Ferdinand where they’re both blushing and exchanging gifts with romantic music in the background. I also noted that they’re one of the couples who get special meal dialogue that evolves along with their supports. See, this is what I mean when I say that M/M and F/F subtext are on completely different playing fields. Dorothea will just come out and ask Manuela if they can live together and forget about finding men, or give Ingrid a ring and joke about owning her, etc. For the guys it’s watching them sputteringly make friendly gestures toward one another while blushing, or make promises to die together, or insist on the other using their given name (but in private!) to indicate that there’s going to be dick touching.

Nader dies during Edelgard’s paralogue. In combination with Judith’s death in Chapter 13 I think this is meant to indicate that this is the one non-Deer route that does not feature a large Almyran invasion after the credits roll. Even if you choose not to kill Claude as I did, without any of his close allies (who are also his parents, in the case of those two?) the implication is that he won’t have the strength to pursue his own dreams of continental conquest. Good on him to outright admit that he has them to Edelgard, though.

Speaking of the game admitting things that otherwise only go implied, let’s talk about those explosions. The Black Eagle Strike Force feints toward Fhirdiad but moves instead to conquer Arianrhod, with Edelgard and Hubert’s target being specifically Cornelia. Cornelia in this route hasn’t betrayed Faerghus to the Empire yet, but according to Arundel she was planning to as a member of Those Who Slither despite lacking their characteristic pallor. Arundel responds by using “pillars of light” - more likely those anachronistic ballistic missiles seen in a church route cutscene - to blast the fortress into oblivion and kill a bunch of people inside.I’m ignoring how petty it seems of Arundel/Thales to nuke a valuable military installation just to get revenge on Edelgard for killing a minion who was going to help Edelgard do what she’s about to do in the last two chapters anyway. No, what fascinates me about this situation is how Edelgard and Hubert immediately spin this for the rest of their army, saying it was Rhea’s doing and using it to motivate the Strike Force to conquer Fhirdiad as quickly as possible. Ever since I got her C support I’ve been curious as to why Edelgard harbors so much personal hatred for the church when Those Who Slither were the ones responsible for torturing her and her siblings for Crest research. Here she’s deliberately making that misdirection, which....doesn’t answer my question at all but does at least demonstrate that the writers are aware of it. How it will all play out, or if this is something that only makes sense when considering information learned from the church and/or Deer routes is yet to be determined.

Looking at this from the perspective of the Strike Force though I can see why they’d need some additional pushing to get invested in how evil Rhea is. She’s done very little so far to follow up on her creepy authoritarian vibes from Part 1, and the scene of her grieving Seteth and Flayn’s deaths only makes her regain some sympathy because of how personally she takes their loss. They have to be saving it all up for the finale. There will have to something to the antagonists we’re about to fight, because so far DImitri in this route has been even more of a non-entity. Of course I know that Chapter 17 brings not one but two flavors of gay tragedy, but in-universe I doubt anyone on the Strike force is squeeing over the Tempest King and his very devoted vassal.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Spoilers

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years

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FE16 Blue Lions Liveblogging

Chapters 17-18. Lots of heavy plot content here.

The further along I get in the war phase the more superfluous the monastery content and calendar system becomes. I haven’t gotten any new paralogues since Annette and Gilbert’s, because I believe you only get ones for characters you’ve recruited and I’ve exhausted all of those. I’ve read that Dimitri may have one toward the end, and Mercedes shares hers with Caspar of all people so that’ll have to wait for a playthrough when I do inter-house recruiting, but apart from that everyone in my army has had one. There’s little to do at the monastery but grind professor rank and Renown, mostly for supports and a last few skill ranks. What little there is in the way of quests is just Gilbert asking for resource contributions. It’s like the endgame WoW of years past, only without even the option to do group content (not that I would, but regardless).

The enemy AI for the school phase’s Battle of the Eagle and Lion allowed it to feel like a genuine struggle between three opposing armies, but round 2 in the war phase sacrificed narrative for the sake of difficulty. The Alliance forces charged my position after a few turns and didn’t go for the Empire at all, leaving me to play more defensively to neutralize their flying archer lord (...I really hope Claude spontaneously getting a wyvern gets some kind of explanation in the Deer route, something more than “because Almyran, just go with it”). Dedue once against punched Edelgard into submission because he’s distinctly good at that - really goes along with the hunting her down and killing her bit in another route, which TVTropes is now claiming can still happen if you choose to spare her. Huh.

Student kills: Ferdinand and Bernadetta from the Eagles, Lorenz, Raphael, Ignatz, Leonie, and Lysithea from the Deer, with the others either retreating or still unseen in the war phase. Petra was the only one who really surprised me by retreating instead of dying.

Starting in Chapter 18 Dimitri can be interacted with again like a normal unit. While I have issues with some of the presentation behind his change of heart (see below), it’s good to have him working on supports and building his skill ranks during training sessions again. Not that he really needs the latter; his stats are massive and both his sword and lance ranks are nearly maxed out.

The story map for Chapter 18 introduces magic/technology hybrids that act like either monsters or siege towers, on top of having at least one enemy caster with a traditional siege spell. Adding a lever far into the map to shut down the lightning towers was a nice touch.

Most of the master classes have been a pain to grind toward, as only a few units have what it takes to be true hybrids. Sylvain is evidently one of them, but sending Mercedes through cavalier to work on her riding for holy knight made her borderline useless. At least some of the advanced classes are good enough to where they could feasibly work for endgame (but I do still want a holy knight, so Mercedes will continue poking things for a while).

Story/Character observations

I’ve been getting all kinds of A supports. Dimitri/Dedue and Felix/Sylvain are as gay as advertised. Catherine/Ashe is one of those rare plot-heavy support lines, where we find out more about Lonato and Ashe’s own drive for revenge. Byleth/Gilbert is not even slightly romantic even late into their A support, which makes me wonder why he’s an S rank option for either gender when it’s more about pushing him to go home to his wife. Ditto Gilbert’s supports with Annette. Ashe/Annette gets kind of cute in the end, but Felix/Annette involves entirely too many of her comically bad songs to be endearing. Manuela cuts out the cougar routine when she spies on Sylvain being an asshole. Catherine thought young Dimitri was a maiden based on his haircut (as seen in the CG of him dancing with Edelgard - this guy is forever doomed to multiple varieties of bad hair) and repeats Felix’s taunt that Dimitri used to get so excited while training that he’d break swords in half but he’s better with lances even though they have less durability? I forget with whom, but Dimitri shuts down the impossible dream of fellow lance lord Ephraim by acknowledging that his traveling the world as a warrior would be irresponsible. The gender of Shamir’s first love might depend on Byleth’s - will have to see how the f!Byleth support words it.

As for the story, this is the moment where Dimitri makes his turn back toward sanity and a sense of personal responsibility. Just as I predicted, his decision to allow that unnamed orphan girl to join the army turns out to have been a bad one. After Rodrigue takes a blade for his prince and Byleth shows himself again adept at swift executions, Dimitri is moved by the death of yet another of his loved ones to go walking in the rain and respond favorably to vaguely inspirational dialogue choices. While I understand what the writers were going for, I have two issues with this sequence of events. The first is minor, in that the CGs used for them - of Fleche preparing to stab Dimitri and Rodrigue stepping between them, of the dying Rodrigue cradling Dimitri’s face, and of Dimitri in the rain - don’t do a very good job of matching the intended mood. The first two use sunset lighting and thus appear much too soft, while Dimitri in the rain with his hair plastered to his head alone against a black background looks unsettling and almost creepy for what’s meant to be his big moment of redemption. That’s a small quibble with artistic choice, however.

On the other hand, my other issue will take a whole post to explain. I’ll be saving that for a larger Dimitri/Dedue project after I’ve completed playthroughs of all the routes routes, but my basic argument is this: Dedue being removed and then optionally re-inserted into the Blue Lions storyline was necessary for Dimitri’s emotional arc to make sense, and to allow Byleth a much larger role in said arc than they otherwise would have had. Yes, I have major shipping goggles on here, but try to imagine a scenario where Dedue saves Dimitri from prison and they go on the run together for five years, before reuniting with everyone at the monastery.

To no one’s surprise, Dedue takes up watching after the prince in the monastery the chapter after he returns. In Chapter 18 he comments that he’s the only that Dimitri hasn’t really changed despite appearing more sane, that he’s still too kind and sensitive to the suffering of war and that Dedue admires him for that. They’re just laying the subtext on thick now.

Related to my problem with the Alliance AI in the threeway battle, it’s never explained why Claude joins the battle at Gronder Field (apart from getting him into that cutscene they all share, anwyay). Prior to that battle House Reigan opposed the Empire and even engaged House Gloucester’s pro-Imperial faction to distract them from Chapter 16′s bridge. As the next chapter’s title references the Deer however I imagine I’ll get an explanation sooner rather than later.

Cornelia’s cleavage may be impossible, but as far as under-dressed female villains in this series go she wasn’t terrible. She doesn’t flirt with anyone and apparently got her lofty position in the Kingdom through her talents at magic and infrastructure reform (which may have included the turrets and giant robots in Fhirdiad? Was that the implication?). Her dying revelation about Dimitri’s stepmother would have landed better had we ever seen anything of her, but I suppose as Edelgard’s birth mother she’ll be brought up again in some capacity on her route.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Spoilers

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years

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FE16 Blue Lions Liveblogging

Chapters 3-4. It takes some time to get used to this game’s pacing, but admittedly a lot of the content is filler that can technically be skipped if you’re not interested or just want to get to the action faster.

Everyone’s in beginner classes. The plan of keeping units in a class until they master it looks like it might not be feasible at higher tiers. I have several already at 10+ where they could promote to immediate classes but nowhere near mastery, and I have to keep in mind that this is not a game with an infinite grind endgame/postgame (at least pre-DLC). Everyone’s about equally useful at what I’ve got them doing, but Ashe is a bit iffy and I’m ignoring Annette’s scattered interests to make her a full mage. Byleth was actually falling behind for a bit, but he just picked up his Prf sword so that ought to make him more useful.

Battalions have their uses, but mostly they’re just minor stats boosts and another button to press in combat. At least they’re low maintenance.

I take back what I said last time about supports growing slowly, because I’ve picked up a ton of them in these two months. Byleth’s first support took me off guard because it happened without my even realizing that I’d initiated it. Sometimes the students just come up and talk at to them during the week.

Also did tea time. Not too hard, pretty dull, and only marginally less weird than face touching. I still maintain that this feature would have better with alcohol, but apparently the Japanese are as prudish as Anglos about that. It also doesn’t feel mechanically very rewarding compared to some of your other uses for activity points.

I’ve got a handful of broken weapons and a bunch of smithing stones, but the forge still hasn’t opened up. I appreciate that you gain access to more monastery features a little each month and not all at once, but this is the only one that I’ve found myself really waiting on.

Speaking of timespans, I believe the school phase lasts twelve in-game months? In which case I’m already a third of the way through it, even with my frequent exploring and need to talk to everyone each month.

Finding lost items and giving gifts is occasionally cute, but doesn’t seem very rewarding. It’s great for the Lions characters since they get more motivation for their studies, but as far as I can tell the other characters only get a small support boost with Byleth that I don’t care about and would probably take forever to get anywhere on that alone besides.

The Death Knight does his best Black Knight impression during Chapter 4, but thankfully he doesn’t move. And I thought beating the fake Desaix in the last battle of FE15 Act 1 was daunting...he does drop a Dark Seal so hypothetically he should be able to be defeated, but I have no idea how without an absurd amount of grinding.

Story/Character observations

The factional conflicts within the church appear to be wholly political in nature, but I’m left wondering if Rhea’s crusade against the Western church is all that we’re going to see of that.

So much character exploration for the Lions pivots around Duscur. As much as I enjoy the central players getting to glimpse other aspects of Faerghus through stuff like Lonato’s rebellion is refreshing.

That said, Dimitri/Dedue just does not let up. Dimitri pulls the “like a brother” bit in his C with Byleth but also admits that Dedue was all he had for companionship after the events of Duscur left him without a father and alienated from his childhood friends. Combine that with Dedue’s perpetual wariness about affecting the reputations of anyone who isn’t Dimitri and Ingrid’s hostility toward Dedue’s presence in their house and the subtext just writes itself. It helps that the two of them are together in basically every cutscene and so far have always appeared in the same area when exploring the monastery but for the most recent month, when Dedue’s offer to help with security was rejected by the church on account of his heritage and yet (and this point might be coincidental? I don’t know if they spawn randomly) his earring can be found in the room where he was with Dimitri the preceding month.

Other support shenanigans: Felix upbraids Sylvain for unknowingly hurting others with his behavior, which is enough to quirk an eyebrow. Ingrid also takes him to task, recounting instances during their youth when Sylvain hit on her elderly grandmother and a scarecrow (NB: from what I’ve seen this is one instance of the text being substantially changed from Japanese, in which he hits on a crossdressing man instead). I get that the intention was to avoid a lazy, transphobic joke, but oddly the English comes off even gayer since I’ve never heard of a female-presenting scarecrow...if you will. Ingrid and Ashe bond over tales of knighthood including one about the King of Lions’s very close friend who gets referenced in the Dimitri/Felix ending and serves as an effective model for how Fódlan history is going to immortalize all this homoeroticism. It’s not mentioned in their C at least, but I got the impression that this is meant to be significant because, as a woman and a commoner respectively, Ingrid and Ashe are outsiders to the usual ranks of knighthood who nonetheless idealize the lifestyle. Mercedes shares her mildly disturbing family history with Byleth, while Annette keeps dropping hints about her missing father and claims Byleth is like her big brother...three conversations before she decides to sleep with him. See, sometimes claiming a sibling-like bond does lead to sex. Awkward considering who I’m planning to have Byleth S rank on this playthrough, however....

Regarding non-student characters, I’ve not yet been given the opportunity to recruit any. This is rather basic information that doesn’t seem to be documented anywhere online yet, so I’m curious to know who becomes available and when.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Spoilers

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