Fire Emblem Catch All

Awesome writeup, WellAdjusted. Now I have some questions / comments in response to that.

Spoiler:

I played as female Byleth. If you play as male Byleth is Rhea trying to reincarnate her dad instead of her mom? Just curious if that part is different.

As far as "those that slither in the dark" and the Black Eagles route, you DO see them / fight them if you make the choice to support Rhea instead of Edelgard. That's my understanding. It's still a good point, though. Since we know from other angles on the story that they're an important faction some followup on them is probably warranted.

I too am wanting some details about them. Are they an ancient civilization that nuked themselves into the stone age, but at the height of their civilization had electronics, nuclear weapons, etc. It's such a strange jag for Fire Emblem. It felt much more like an SMT game. I'm fine with it not being spelled out completely, but I feel like they could have told us a little more.

Regarding male/female Byleth:

Spoiler:

That's actually an interesting point. I played a male Byleth in my GD run but all references to the goddess were female.
I sort of got the sense that Rhea was trying to bring Sothis back into the world through Byleth, and that even though my Byleth was male Rhea still viewed her mom as her mom and Byleth as Byleth, even after Byleth goes Super Saiyan (Super Sothis?)

WellAdjusted wrote:

Regarding male/female Byleth:

Spoiler:

That's actually an interesting point. I played a male Byleth in my GD run but all references to the goddess were female.
I sort of got the sense that Rhea was trying to bring Sothis back into the world through Byleth, and that even though my Byleth was male Rhea still viewed her mom as her mom and Byleth as Byleth, even after Byleth goes Super Saiyan (Super Sothis?)

Spoiler:

Rhea is always trying to bring back Sothis, who is always female.

Almost done Chapter 11. I am still amazed at just how much little bits of story-detail are littered throughout the different supports. For example, regarding Catherine and Dmitri's C-Rank Support Conversation:

Spoiler:

Finding out she's a fugitive with a different name with ties to nobility that's already familiar with Dmitri? Talk about a surprising bombshell just casually thrown out there in an easy-to-miss bit of content

While many of the conversations still rely on superficial elements, many of which are born from anime style tropes, it feels like those are used as "ice breakers" to instead develop the characters in a deeper fashion. Dedue is one such example. If it's not the outright racism against his people, it's the "gentle giant loves to cook" angle that has me wondering if you can unlock a special cooking class with him if you get enough relevant supports unlocked.

It only makes it all the more hair-pulling because I like to play matchmaker in these games (that's right, I'm the person DSGamer hates for having ruined Fire Emblem forever), but unlike the prior games with romance options where all the supports were shallow and poorly written, these can actually get really interesting and cause me to wonder who is truly the best match for who.

Regardless, gearing up to conclude chapter 11 and push the story forward. I have maybe half-a-dozen or more supports waiting for story progress.

Well, I'm in Chapter 12, last day-off before the big end-of-month battle. I have a bunch of supports up to B but they haven't accepted recruitment yet. I'm wondering if I should explore one last time and see if they'll join, or if I should just give up and move on.

For some reason I'm assuming this is also my last chance to recruit. It just feels... thematically appropriate if it was.

Depending on your route there are some post time skip recruiting opportunities. When you fight former students, use Byleth and sometimes you get them to join.

You can look up specifics if you don't mind minor spoilers

Currently playing as Blue Lions, which I still feel could make for a pretty decent starting route.

Spoiler:

I'm wondering how I'd have felt about the "Edelgard is the Flame Emperor" reveal if it hadn't been so telegraphed online. You guys did a handy job of hiding it, but there were enough details dropped here and there that it was easy to figure out her identity even without clicking spoiler tags.

However, knowing that she and Dmitri share a past helped build up the reveal in a really nifty way, especially since it wouldn't have been so obvious without some of the support conversations. Sylvain pokes fun at Dmitri in one of theirs over giving "a girl a knife as a present" when they were younger, indicating Dmitri isn't so good with women. Later, after the ball, Dmitri confesses that he had given it to Edelgard as they had known each other as children. It was either after Japeth's death or upon seeing the Flame Emperor on monastery grounds that Dmitri picks up a knife the Emperor had held and recognizes it. A great way to build up, clue you in, and then suddenly in the Holy Tomb Dmitri is claiming she was there during the Tragedy of Duscar.

It's a really great build up, but I cannot help but wonder if there's something lacking simply due to having already known Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, and in her route you can choose to fight for or against her.

There also seem to be Byleth and Rhea related revelations that I'm curious regarding how they play out in other routes. I feel like Edelgard's would have to deviate for at least some of these chapters, and then I can't help but wonder about Claude's since he's almost a third wheel.

Regardless, it only took 40 hours but the story is starting to really get going.

ccesarano wrote:

Well, I'm in Chapter 12, last day-off before the big end-of-month battle. I have a bunch of supports up to B but they haven't accepted recruitment yet. I'm wondering if I should explore one last time and see if they'll join, or if I should just give up and move on.

For some reason I'm assuming this is also my last chance to recruit. It just feels... thematically appropriate if it was.

It’s not just having supports up to level B, it’s also what level Byleths stats are at, and each person has requirements. Now, getting the support to level B reduces those requirements by a lot, so getting your stat in that skill up to D should be enough for most of them off the top of my head. I was similarly frustrated that people weren’t joining me once the hit B, and they were seldom joining randomly in the middle of a week. Getting those skills up with tutors got me the rest of the way there, but it did take a couple of months to get it all done, depending on what professors were available to tutor me, since that varied in a few chapters.

B support is all you need for the random mid week joins. Stats don't matter for those at all.

Joining when you ask during exploration is the only time where stats matter.

Also, it sounds like it's too late for your current run ccesarano, but those random B rank joins definitely can be save scummed.

Ah well. I'll just do the explore anyway and try to get my team motivated through food for lessons the next day.

The flesh is weak--I've started a Blue Lions run. I've bumped the difficulty up to maddening so we'll see how that goes.

WellAdjusted wrote:

The flesh is weak--I've started a Blue Lions run. I've bumped the difficulty up to maddening so we'll see how that goes.

Do report back - I'm considering Maddening for my 2nd run.

Jonman wrote:
WellAdjusted wrote:

The flesh is weak--I've started a Blue Lions run. I've bumped the difficulty up to maddening so we'll see how that goes.

Do report back - I'm considering Maddening for my 2nd run.

Ditto, but more likely staying at hard and adding permadeath.

I really like this game! I was skeptical at first - I dropped out of the Fire Emblem series all the way back when I quit Radiant Dawn on the Wii - but it's become one of my GOTY candidates. I want to thank you guys for all your help - I've had this thread constantly open on my phone

Currently up to chapter 7, BE, on hard/classic. I really like Edelgard's calm competence, she hits like a locomotive, and her "only sane woman" shtick is good for a laugh. Ferdinand is formidable in battle - I once had him solo an entire room of physical enemies - and a decent chap under the vanity. Hubert is a powerhouse, I like Petra's pluck, and Dorothea trolling the others makes me laugh. I've also picked up my first recruits - Ingrid and Shamir. Raphael and I think Mercedes have hit B and should join soon.

More character/story thoughts and speculation (have avoided spoilers so this is just guesswork):

Spoiler:

For the Legend of the Galactic Heroes fans out there, Edelgard gives me serious SIEG KAISERIN vibes. I'm a little worried what she might grow up to become...

Rhea is interesting because of the contrast between her VA/design (gentle, tranquil), her behaviour towards the MC (maternal, nurturing), and her treatment of her enemies (anything but).

I'm guessing Sothis is the goddess reborn? And this is why Rhea is so keen to get the MC on her side?

The Chapter 6 relic thief transforming into a hideous monster felt a LOT like FFT. A hint as to where the plot is going?

Welcome to the thread!

I’m just about done with my Golden Deer run. I’m on the second to last chapter, so I expect to be done sometime this weekend, and I’ll put together some thoughts at that point. Meanwhile, I spent literally 90 minutes last night watching a ton of A supports, so that I still got them in but they shouldn’t interfere with the planned paired endings. I’ll report back on the results.

Firstly, at this point the reaction is several days old, but given I went through the time jump this felt appropriate re: Dimitri.

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/l4FGGafcOHmrlQxG0/giphy.gif)

So something occurred to me. Dorothea won the whole Dance thing and unlocked the Dancer class. But I can't see where the Dancer class is available in the list of available classes, and as far as I can tell they didn't automatically change her over.

What's the obvious "change her to dancer here" sign post I'm missing?

Dancer is up at the top, under the list of special classes, above the Basic/Intermediate/etc. ones

You can reclass anyone through the menu, Inventory > Reclass. It'll be at the top of Dorothea's list.

Also you won’t see it in the certification interface, I don’t believe. Assuming that’s where you’re looking.

You have to go to “Inventory -> Reclass”.

DSGamer wrote:

Also you won’t see it in the certification interface, I don’t believe. Assuming that’s where you’re looking.

You have to go to “Inventory -> Reclass”.

That'll do it. I've never used the Inventory -> Reclass option.

I didn't play at all over the weekend so looking to make progress tonight. Got the Blue Lions back, now just need to get the rest of my recruits back.

ccesarano wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Also you won’t see it in the certification interface, I don’t believe. Assuming that’s where you’re looking.

You have to go to “Inventory -> Reclass”.

That'll do it. I've never used the Inventory -> Reclass option.

I didn't play at all over the weekend so looking to make progress tonight. Got the Blue Lions back, now just need to get the rest of my recruits back.

Yeah. It's not very intuitive to have reclassing be part of the Inventory menu.

It's still early days on my Blue Lions playthrough, but Maddening mode is hard ya'll.

I haven't played enough to see how/if the AI has changed, but enemies in the story missions are consistently several levels higher than me and usually have some powerful abilities attached (archers with poison strike, melee dudes with pass through, etc.) Level xp gains appear to be nerfed a bit as well--in the second story fight I had 3-4 units that were still level 2-3 going up against level 9 enemies.

The difficulty is definitely forcing me to dig into the Gambit system a little more and focus my character development that way as well.

That sounds......maddening. It’s almost like there should be another difficulty level above hard but below that.

Edit: thinking about it a bit more, I wonder if the difficultly will be front loaded. Like, if you can get the professor level from the start, you can just grind for several weeks and then get caught up, and then stay even with the level curve from then on.

I'm on Chapter 15 Golden Deer in Maddening (no NG+ used, trying to get the title screen change ): in my experience, the difficulty is definitely a bit front-loaded. Enemies are still a good 5-6 levels ahead of most of my army on most maps, but it largely doesn't matter because of the growing number of advantages player units get over enemy units as the game progresses (better default stat growth, the ability to use Combat Arts, better ability sets, stat increase items, upgraded/rarer weapons, special classes, good battalions, etc.)

Levels and abilities aren't the only changes Maddening brings though: enemies tend to "wake up" faster even if nothing gets in their range, and even some bosses will eventually wake up and start moving. (This oddly ends up being helpful with bosses in many cases, since it means they move off the heal tiles or whatnot they usually would stubbornly stand on in Normal/Hard.)

I know this is the conversation here has mostly been about Three Houses, but I just bought and fired up Shadows of Valencia this past week, and am having an absolute blast with it. It's quickly making a play for one of my favorite Fire Emblem games.

I played SoV earlier this year and loved it. The production values were probably the best in any fire emblem game, and my only complaint was about the simplicity of the maps, which got better as the game went along.

I’m really hoping/thinking that Echoes is the banner than a bunch more remakes of earlier games are done under, and that Genealogy of the Holy War will come out in the next few years.

The production values are great. And yeah, I agree the maps were a bit simple at first, but I like how quickly they play. I also really like moving units on a world map: haven't seen that before in a Fire Emblem, but I'm about it. During Acts 1 and 2, the story progression felt more natural to me than it has in some Fire Emblem games, and I think moving my units across the map is a big part of the reason why. I just started Act 3 and I love having a larger map that can feature both armies at once.

Spoiler:

Also, the moment at the end of Act 2 when Alm and Celica were reunited, and then immediately pick a fight with each other, felt very real. Such good writing there.

And the Turnwheel is the biggest feature that I never knew I always wanted in a Fire Emblem game.

Also, this is not a specific Fire Emblem thing, but: I love spending so much of the game listening to the voice actors from P5 who played Futaba (here: Celica) and Makoto (here: Mae). It's also fun that they've flipped personalities a little bit, with Celica much more serious than Futaba (most of the time) and Mae much more free-spirited and energetic than Makoto. Both the actors do a great job with this.

At the 80 hour mark, I beat the Golden Deer route. That’s about 10 more hours than it took me for the Black Eagles route. And suffice to say, it was a very different view of the events of the game.

I want to touch on the difficulty and some of the things I did for a minute, before I get into spoilers. As expected from a new game plus, it was easier the second go around, and for the reasons you would expect. Being able to level up the professor level immediately meant I could grind with relative ease, so even on hard mode I was overleveled by the third chapter and never looked back. The other reason is simply knowing what I was doing this go around, and being able to recruit and pick character classes effectively. I mentioned before the importance of Death Blow, and how I made a point to put it on all of my physical attackers. Well, since most of them were also flying units, they also got the bonuses to avoiding if they just use the Wait command. So if I attacked with them, they hit like a freight train, and if they moved up to bait enemies they dodge tanked everything. And this worked over and over, and only got better with the higher dodge levels. So knowing how important stuff like this was make the game a lot easier; I think the only difficult chapter in the game was the first one after the timeskip, and that’s only since you’re in an awkward starting position.

The other interesting new skills I got were the ones from the Dark Mage and Dark Bishop. I didn’t manage to get any Dark Seals in my BE run, so I didn’t have a chance to experiment with them. Late in this run, I sent Byleth, Lorenz, and Ignatz through Dark Mage (since I figured I might as well use the seals while I had them), and then send Byleth and Lorenz through Dark Bishop. And those gave some fantastic abilities; Poison Strike does extra damage after an attack (which is useful for monsters and other high HP enemies), and Lifetaker lets you heal whenever you get a kill. By the end of the game, that made Byleth (and to a lesser extent Lorenz) one men armies, who could heal themselves through fights and basically never die. It’s like a more reliable version of Sol or something from Awakening. It’s the sort of thing that would probably be a crutch for future Maddening runs, and I would want to get it on Sylvain and Felix (these are male classes only) when I do a Blue Lions run, since they’re too useful not to use.

Now for plot and mission discussions.

Spoiler:

Did anyone expect a hard swerve into dubstep during the City Without Light? Cause I sure didn’t. What even happened there?

So Rhea actually lived to tell us things about the world after promising she would after the battle. That’s one up on Jeralt. Sothis’ heart being on Byleth’s heart and disappearing at the end of the BE run now makes quite a bit more sense now. And finally we understand why exactly Sothis was in Byleth’s head, although I suppose that doesn’t answer why she waited until the game started to wake up. Probably doesn’t matter.

So if I read this correct, Those That Wub in the Dark are bitter at Rhea and the other children of Sothis, and they put in Edelgard’s head that Rhea was the true villain. It was true that she was behind a lot of what went on in the continent, but it’s also true that she seemed like she was somewhat benevolent except for doing undisclosed things to bring back Sothis and killing those who opposed her. Seems like Edelgard might have actually viewed her as worse than she actually was, which is why she caused the whole war in the first place. Although I suppose the crest system (brought about by the slithers if I saw that right?) has enforced a class system that probably did need to end, but since the crests were weakening, I don’t know how much longer that system was going to last anyway.

The final battle itself was a blitz; I sent Byleth and Ingrid north and they cut through basically everything with a Rapier and Silver Axe, respectively. Claude flew straight up the middle, and took down generals and archers all by himself (with some physic support). And I sent Leonie, Cyril, and Raphael to the south where there were more enemies and monsters, and they cut a swath of destruction through everything. The rest of the party chipped in occasionally, but these were my A team, and they were all I really needed.

Nemesis seemed hard but turned out easy. Hard, since he didn’t take much damage at first, and Gambits did basically nothing. I tried using Leonie's Gambit to get them to switch places to get him off the heal pad, but no dice. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do any damage to him, and considering he would heal from the pad he was on and his ability, I didn’t know how long this fight was going to have to be. But then I had Byleth attack, and he did 20 damage, and then Poison Strike kicked in and did a bonus 27 damage on top of that. Then I sent Cyril in with his Brave Axe and he hit 4 times for 40 damage total, and stood strong against a huge attack. That was enough to bring Nemesis into killing range for Lysithea, who couldn’t take a hit back, but didn’t need to. And so I one rounded Nemesis in a fight that started out as one that seemed like it would take forever, but snowballed quickly once I got the first big chunk off.

I would have liked to see a bit more on how Byleth became the King of Fodlan, since it seems like an additional cutscene would have filled in that gap nicely.

I’ll also cover my pairings, for anyone interested:

Spoiler:

Byleth X Leonie: This seemed like the fit for this route, since they had the Jeralt connection. And she gets to keep her promise this way. Plus they get to go fight some bandits on the side as well, so everyone’s happy. I almost flipped Leonie to Lorenz and paired Byleth and Marianne, but I couldn’t get Leonie to show up on Lorenz’ top 3 even after many battles of pairings, so I eventually dropped it in order to ensure as many pairings as possible.

Claude X Ingrid: Since she’s the only one who can keep him in line.

Lorenz X Marianne: He gets a wife from an important and rising house; she moves on from the curse of her crest and goes on to be a strong individual in her own right. Plus she gets to spend a lot of time with horses and cattle (which makes her happy), and he gets known as the father of horses and cattle (which annoys him). I’ll call this one a win.

Hilda X Cyril: Hilda and house Goneril is contributing to the breaking down of barriers. Plus it was easy to pair them since they were both wyvern riders (Cyril replaced Hilda in my lineup), so I could just make Hilda his adjutant over and over.

Raphael X Ignatz: Bros 4 lyfe. Raphael finally got to be a knight, and then went back to running the inn when his sister went off to live her own life. Which included marrying Ignatz, as it turns out. Nothing better than in-laws that you like. And Ignatz got to be an artist in the end. (Did you know he painted)

Lysithea X Lindhardt: The pairing I was trying to get in the Black Eagles route, until Hanneman poached her to have her be his new prized student. Much like in that ending, Lysithea finds someone to help her remove her crests, and she gets to live a long and happy life. Good ending for her. My favorite long-range glass cannon deserved it.

Mercedes X Annette: Sisterhood 4 lyfe.

Sylvain X Dorothea: The pairing I had a sneaky regard for. The noble who hates that everyone only wants him for his crest and doesn’t really care about him as a person, and the commoner who hates that everyone only wants her for her beauty and doesn’t really care about her as a person. The only ones who can understand find each other, and in doing so find happiness. Eventually.

Caspar X Catherine: They got to go off and yell their catchphrases together, which is all they ever really wanted.

I waited until the end to trigger most of the A supports, and I got a 100% success rate for my targets. Seems like that strategy worked.

With that out of the way, now I’m going to go ready what WellAdjusted wrote in spoilers at the top of this page.

Sundown wrote:
Spoiler:

Did anyone expect a hard swerve into dubstep during the City Without Light? Cause I sure didn’t. What even happened there?

Spoiler:

I didn't expect it and I still don't know what it meant. The only thing I could take from it (aside from developers influenced by their previous collaboration with the Persona team) is that the previous civilization was highly advanced. Not only do they have dubstep, robots, neon, etc., but they also have nuclear weapons.

Spoiler:

So Rhea actually lived to tell us things about the world after promising she would after the battle. That’s one up on Jeralt. Sothis’ heart being on Byleth’s heart and disappearing at the end of the BE run now makes quite a bit more sense now. And finally we understand why exactly Sothis was in Byleth’s head, although I suppose that doesn’t answer why she waited until the game started to wake up. Probably doesn’t matter.

Spoiler:

Oh, so they don't explain this in the BE route? Wild. I haven't finished the BE route yet, so that's a bit of a surprise.