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McTimmy
Feb 29, 2008

PsychoInternetHawk posted:

"A TASTE MORE BITTER THAN THE BLACKEST COFFEE"

Coffee isn't even that widespread in Fodlan why is this a common line :argh:

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Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

Gonna ask and I understand that it's probably not popular opinion but are Lions/Deer stories more interesting? I took a break from SB and I'm pretty sure I'm near the end and while I think the games good dumb fun I'm starting to feel kinda winded.

This has been up to where I am the most *nothing* story I've ever seen. Chapters of 'we need to save this random dude' who is never really mentioned again, then it just feels like absolutely nothing has happened. Ferdie just killed his dad and I can barely care because like... I'm just not invested in that angle all that much. Combined with that is the fact the game has just dropped all attempts to really fight back. Balthus for some reason has like 80 ATK so he just does a normal punch and everything dies, my MC unit just starts cutting until everything is dead with her unique class and Lystenthia/Edlegard feel equally unstoppable to the point most missions are now just 'hey go do a thing'

I know the older games were literal talking heads but it really doesn't help that the cutscenes feel like they drag on forever and it's just the gang standing in a field expositioning at each other. I find my attention drifting to discord or twitter just because the routes refusing to at least make the story interesting.



Just man I wanna love the game and get wrapped up in a fun narrative but the characters feel so flat and they aren't doing anything it's hard to really invest in them. I finished all 3 routes of Three Houses and while I felt burnout at the finish line, I'm feeling it a lot faster here :(

Without getting into specific spoilers the GD route covers mostly the same conflict as SB, but from the Deer's perspective. There are some key differences and you do deal with Almyra a bit, but it hits a lot of the same beats. If nothing else Claude is a hell of a ride in GW, finally living up to his schemer persona and then some. Lions is the most divergent route of the three, focusing a lot more on the internal politics of the Kingdom and Dimitri's quest to untangle the truth behind Duscar. It's also the route that deals the heaviest with the Slithers, which is funny considering in Houses Lions was the only route that functionally didn't acknowledge them. There is one big plot development about halfway through that also radically alters its story vs the other two and it is... contentious, to put it mildly.

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
Just for the record, I don't think she drove all of humanity underground, just the Agartheans. The one thing I genuinely appreciate about them as villains is that they refer to themselves as humans and everyone else as beasts. It's such a simple thing, but I honestly don't think I've seen it anywhere else.

It's also what makes Arval the way he is; all he remembers is the imperative to protect humanity and the cycle, which obviously must refer to Shez and their friends, they're quite clearly all human, and he has no idea what the gently caress an Agarthean even is. This would have been a very different story if he'd been able to remember more than two details.

But yeah Rhea was a tyrant who rewrote history to refer to her as some vague "evil gods, " then dyed her hair and went right back to ruling but as a shadowy lizard person behind the scenes instead of as a big target.

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


Zulily Zoetrope posted:

Just for the record, I don't think she drove all of humanity underground, just the Agartheans. The one thing I genuinely appreciate about them as villains is that they refer to themselves as humans and everyone else as beasts. It's such a simple thing, but I honestly don't think I've seen it anywhere else.

It's also what makes Arval the way he is; all he remembers is the imperative to protect humanity and the cycle, which obviously must refer to Shez and their friends, they're quite clearly all human, and he has no idea what the gently caress an Agarthean even is. This would have been a very different story if he'd been able to remember more than two details.

But yeah Rhea was a tyrant who rewrote history to refer to her as some vague "evil gods, " then dyed her hair and went right back to ruling but as a shadowy lizard person behind the scenes instead of as a big target.

I mean it makes sense that they do. If they were the original human civilization, and we know that the dragons couldn't keep it in their pants so there was some interbreeding even before the Agarthans injected people with crests, then they'd see the people who stayed up top and mingled with the dragons as halfbreeds. You know if you're a racist rear end in a top hat, which Agarthans certainly are. :v:

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

Gonna ask and I understand that it's probably not popular opinion but are Lions/Deer stories more interesting? I took a break from SB and I'm pretty sure I'm near the end and while I think the games good dumb fun I'm starting to feel kinda winded.

This has been up to where I am the most *nothing* story I've ever seen. Chapters of 'we need to save this random dude' who is never really mentioned again, then it just feels like absolutely nothing has happened. Ferdie just killed his dad and I can barely care because like... I'm just not invested in that angle all that much. Combined with that is the fact the game has just dropped all attempts to really fight back. Balthus for some reason has like 80 ATK so he just does a normal punch and everything dies, my MC unit just starts cutting until everything is dead with her unique class and Lystenthia/Edlegard feel equally unstoppable to the point most missions are now just 'hey go do a thing'

I know the older games were literal talking heads but it really doesn't help that the cutscenes feel like they drag on forever and it's just the gang standing in a field expositioning at each other. I find my attention drifting to discord or twitter just because the routes refusing to at least make the story interesting.



Just man I wanna love the game and get wrapped up in a fun narrative but the characters feel so flat and they aren't doing anything it's hard to really invest in them. I finished all 3 routes of Three Houses and while I felt burnout at the finish line, I'm feeling it a lot faster here :(

Sadly I think I felt this too, where the game doesn't stick any of it's emotional beats anywhere near as good as Houses. The combat is just too easy even on the higher difficulties to really make any fight feel particularly hard because of it's unique properties instead of just a threat to your S rank. The story in Hopes is great for filling in a lot of setting detail and seeing alternate takes on things, but it does not bring any of the emotional stuff I wanted out of a more complete CF.

Eimi fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jul 25, 2022

PsychoInternetHawk
Apr 4, 2011

Perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.
Grimey Drawer

Sudden Javelin posted:

finished Azure Gleam last night. it's uhhhh certainly a route! my second one after scarlet blaze

felix was probably the most improved lion in my opinion, letting him have responsibilities and things helped quite a bit. (petra is most improved eagle, hapi is most improved anybody)

gonna run through golden wildfire then put the game down and wait to see if DLC comes along as i know each route has two branches, so if it does the houses thing of "there's an extra story but also a bunch of poo poo added to regular playthroughs" then i figure i can do the alternate branch for each house with DLC perks

Just to clarify here, each House's story doesn't really branch per se, but rather there's a way to get a couple extra chapters and what could be considered a "good" ending for each:
recruiting Byleth will get you a couple extra chapters giving you insight into what Arval's deal is, failing to do so will just make the game slightly shorter and you lose out on some unlockables. You are given this choice with slightly different contexts for all Houses, so you do not need to go through the same route twice.

Ursine Catastrophe
Nov 9, 2009

It's a lovely morning in the void and you are a horrible lady-in-waiting.



don't ask how i know

Dinosaur Gum
The fact that they added the whistles in for a pittance of renown (seriously I think you get like 2x as much renown per chapter while using whistles than costs to buy that number of whistles in the first place) indicates they knew exactly how likely it was that people would burn out on gameplay before they finished all 3 routes or 6 if you want to see what each route's good/bad ending is

I ended up doing SB->AG->GW and whistling past most of the back half of GW

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
I feel like it's implied somewhere that Agartheans were native to Fódlan while humans migrated there from the other continents? I don't remember where I got that idea, but I always figured it went something like

1) Agartheans are the only people in Fódlan. Sometimes someone wanders in from Almyra or the ocean and is promptly removed.
2) Sothis rolls in on her spaceship, sees a continent that looks kind of like her face, and decides to settle down there with her kids.
3) The Agartheans are driven underground, and the next people who roll in are instead met with Nabateans, who decide to take them in as pets.

I hadn't figured interbreeding was part of it, given that all the crests we know of came from drinking blood, but then again, in Three Houses, Linhardt and Flayn manage to produce a litter of sleepy phenoms if you let them, so it's certainly possible.

E:

On the route split: only Scarlet Blaze has any notable divergence. The other "bad" routes play out exactly the same, only differing in the cutscene where Byleth kills Randolph/Judith/Rodrigue, a handful of different camp lines and a few altered lines cutscenes that don't even qualify for their own slot in the event viewer. All you're missing if you just mess up the recruitment and get the unique FMV is the Byleth cutscenes with the same dialogue but sometimes with different backgrounds. Yes, I checked. :argh:

Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jul 25, 2022

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute

Ursine Catastrophe posted:

The fact that they added the whistles in for a pittance of renown (seriously I think you get like 2x as much renown per chapter while using whistles than costs to buy that number of whistles in the first place) indicates they knew exactly how likely it was that people would burn out on gameplay before they finished all 3 routes or 6 if you want to see what each route's good/bad ending is

I ended up doing SB->AG->GW and whistling past most of the back half of GW

Yeah rally whistles are absolutely something that got thrown in late after playtesters came back and said hey after awhile these side missions start the drag hard, particularly on subsequent playthroughs.

After a point they're really only useful for grinding class XP and money anyway. And really after a point in NG+ runs you don't really need money anymore unless you're playing on maddening because you'll have run out of tactics academy things to buy, stats barely matter so investing in level ups isn't really worth it, and once you have a decent crop of high Mt weapons to share around forging just becomes masturbatory.

Bloodly
Nov 3, 2008

Not as strong as you'd expect.

McTimmy posted:

Coffee isn't even that widespread in Fodlan why is this a common line :argh:

Well, the one with that line is Gremory-type. High-class, noble.

KittyEmpress
Dec 30, 2012

Jam Buddies

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

I feel like it's implied somewhere that Agartheans were native to Fódlan while humans migrated there from the other continents? I don't remember where I got that idea, but I always figured it went something like

1) Agartheans are the only people in Fódlan. Sometimes someone wanders in from Almyra or the ocean and is promptly removed.
2) Sothis rolls in on her spaceship, sees a continent that looks kind of like her face, and decides to settle down there with her kids.
3) The Agartheans are driven underground, and the next people who roll in are instead met with Nabateans, who decide to take them in as pets.

I hadn't figured interbreeding was part of it, given that all the crests we know of came from drinking blood, but then again, in Three Houses, Linhardt and Flayn manage to produce a litter of sleepy phenoms if you let them, so it's certainly possible.

E:

On the route split: only Scarlet Blaze has any notable divergence. The other "bad" routes play out exactly the same, only differing in the cutscene where Byleth kills Randolph/Judith/Rodrigue, a handful of different camp lines and a few altered lines cutscenes that don't even qualify for their own slot in the event viewer. All you're missing if you just mess up the recruitment and get the unique FMV is the Byleth cutscenes with the same dialogue but sometimes with different backgrounds. Yes, I checked. :argh:

My personal theory is that Agarthans had a colonial empire, since in Houses Petra talks about green haired myth heroes from Brigid's religion, who helped them throw off an unnamed group of oppressors back before Brigid was Brigid. This only comes up in a single dialogue right after byleth turns green.

It's also mentioned in Houses thst other nations also have myths about green haired heroes who showed up out of nowhere, did crazy poo poo, then disappeared.


So at the very least Sothis and her kids expanded far beyond Fodlan, whether that was to wipe out Agarthans as I think, because some wanted their own place to live, or to further gently caress with humanity worldwide.

Shiny777
Oct 29, 2011

YAMI WO KIRISAKU
OH DESIRE


My understanding of the order of backstory events was that it went something like

1. Agarthans exist on Fodlan
2. Sothis rolls in from space, has a bunch of kids in Zanado, shares knowledge with the Agarthans that leads to them becoming super advanced
3. Agarthans decide they have no further need of a space dragon goddess and try to nuke her, Sothis hits back with a flood that kills most of them and drives the rest underground, where they sit around being eternally angry that nuking god didn't work out perfectly
4. Sothis fixes the world, makes humanity 2.0 to replace the Agarthans, and goes to take a nap
5. Per that dev interview, her kids decide to be assholes to the new humans, so they're receptive when some bandit the Agarthans talked into quietly shanking Sothis in her sleep rolls in shouting about liberation and handing out magic blood and creepy bone weapons, cut to the less murky parts of history.

Admittedly it involves taking Rhea at her word about some of the early stuff, but all we really get of the Agarthan perspective starts at the "oh poo poo we hosed up and are getting smote" stage and we only even get slivers of that.

Perfect Potato
Mar 4, 2009

Shiny777 posted:

My understanding of the order of backstory events was that it went something like

1. Agarthans exist on Fodlan
2. Sothis rolls in from space, has a bunch of kids in Zanado, shares knowledge with the Agarthans that leads to them becoming super advanced
3. Agarthans decide they have no further need of a space dragon goddess and try to nuke her, Sothis hits back with a flood that kills most of them and drives the rest underground, where they sit around being eternally angry that nuking god didn't work out perfectly
4. Sothis fixes the world, makes humanity 2.0 to replace the Agarthans, and goes to take a nap
5. Per that dev interview, her kids decide to be assholes to the new humans, so they're receptive when some bandit the Agarthans talked into quietly shanking Sothis in her sleep rolls in shouting about liberation and handing out magic blood and creepy bone weapons, cut to the less murky parts of history.

Admittedly it involves taking Rhea at her word about some of the early stuff, but all we really get of the Agarthan perspective starts at the "oh poo poo we hosed up and are getting smote" stage and we only even get slivers of that.

The dev interview from back in the day makes no moral judgment on the Nabateans who spread out and governed. It is funny how it basically describes the 10 elites as Monster Hunters killing bigger dragons for stronger weapons though

Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
The Nabateans as rulers were hated to the extent that Rhea wasn't able to overwrite that aspect of history. She just left out the part about who exactly it was that the ten elites actually liberated Fodlan from.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

Gonna ask and I understand that it's probably not popular opinion but are Lions/Deer stories more interesting? I took a break from SB and I'm pretty sure I'm near the end and while I think the games good dumb fun I'm starting to feel kinda winded.

This has been up to where I am the most *nothing* story I've ever seen. Chapters of 'we need to save this random dude' who is never really mentioned again, then it just feels like absolutely nothing has happened. Ferdie just killed his dad and I can barely care because like... I'm just not invested in that angle all that much. Combined with that is the fact the game has just dropped all attempts to really fight back. Balthus for some reason has like 80 ATK so he just does a normal punch and everything dies, my MC unit just starts cutting until everything is dead with her unique class and Lystenthia/Edlegard feel equally unstoppable to the point most missions are now just 'hey go do a thing'

I know the older games were literal talking heads but it really doesn't help that the cutscenes feel like they drag on forever and it's just the gang standing in a field expositioning at each other. I find my attention drifting to discord or twitter just because the routes refusing to at least make the story interesting.



Just man I wanna love the game and get wrapped up in a fun narrative but the characters feel so flat and they aren't doing anything it's hard to really invest in them. I finished all 3 routes of Three Houses and while I felt burnout at the finish line, I'm feeling it a lot faster here :(

I don't understand the appeal of this game and I regret buying it.

The gameplay is uninteresting and puddle-deep. I knew that going in and I expected that at least the story would do something interesting. It really did seem like it was going to do something interesting around chapter ~7 and then ... nothing happened. For the entire game. The war doesn't even end, there's just a tiny little text scroll explaining the immediate following events that seems for all the world like a fake ending but that's the actual real ending of the game. The kindest thing I can say about this game is that it gives you a bunch of extra support conversation cutscenes because the main story sucks rear end. The developers wanted this to be a second-class spinoff game and/or didn't want to have too "happy" an outcome that would have "invalidated" Houses and any of its selection of possible endings.

Obviously Musous have a market but I am completely unable to understand it.

Epi Lepi
Oct 29, 2009

You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Sapozhnik posted:

The Nabateans as rulers were hated to the extent that Rhea wasn't able to overwrite that aspect of history. She just left out the part about who exactly it was that the ten elites actually liberated Fodlan from.

I don't understand the appeal of this game and I regret buying it.

The gameplay is uninteresting and puddle-deep. I knew that going in and I expected that at least the story would do something interesting. It really did seem like it was going to do something interesting around chapter ~7 and then ... nothing happened. For the entire game. The war doesn't even end, there's just a tiny little text scroll explaining the immediate following events that seems for all the world like a fake ending but that's the actual real ending of the game. The kindest thing I can say about this game is that it gives you a bunch of extra support conversation cutscenes because the main story sucks rear end. The developers wanted this to be a second-class spinoff game and/or didn't want to have too "happy" an outcome that would have "invalidated" Houses and any of its selection of possible endings.

Obviously Musous have a market but I am completely unable to understand it.

Button mashing a billion dudes into oblivion is fun.

Pureauthor
Jul 8, 2010

ASK ME ABOUT KISSING A GHOST
I'd just like to say that even if the Nabateans were relatively benign rulers, if a dude showed up with superpowers and wielding a sword clearly made out of a spine and yelled about how drinking Nabateans blood would totes give you superpowers too, it would not be at all difficult to get people to buy in.

Perfect Potato
Mar 4, 2009

Pureauthor posted:

I'd just like to say that even if the Nabateans were relatively benign rulers, if a dude showed up with superpowers and wielding a sword clearly made out of a spine and yelled about how drinking Nabateans blood would totes give you superpowers too, it would not be at all difficult to get people to buy in.

Yes the most likely explanation is that the Agarthans went up to Nemesis and said these guys aren't actually gods and can be killed and here's a copy of the hit Capcom game Monster Hunter and Nemesis proceeded to proliferate said ideology throughout northern Fodlan after curbstomping Zanado, rulers don't have to be evil or incompetent for the masses to turn against them, especially when some barbarian rolls up wearing your god's head as a hat and telling you s' cool

Blaziken386
Jun 27, 2013

I'm what the kids call: a big nerd

Sydin posted:

One of the more fascinating lines of throwaway dialogue is if you take Dimitri out on an expedition, he can talk about how Rhea taught him about crop rotation to bolster the long-term fertility of the Kingdom's agriculture. We hear a lot about how the Kingdom is kind of a shithole without lots of fertile land and one of the first things Dimitri says to Rhea when taking her in is "hey we just so we're straight I not only can't afford to pay your knights, I'm barely going to be able to feed them" so at first glance this seems great! But then you realize Rhea had this knowledge the whole time but withheld it from the nation that a) needs it the most, and b) is the most tied to the Central Church, so she could keep them reliant on the Church's charity. She only gave the knowledge out once the Kingdom's low crop yields directly became her problem.
lmao

i like rhea because shes an interesting character but also every time the game even hints at her 1000 years of scheming its just like, drat rhea what the gently caress
rhea just casually taking concepts like "sustainable agriculture" and "literacy" and hiding them in the church's basement next to her collection of dead nuns

Shiny777 posted:

My understanding of the order of backstory events was that it went something like

1. Agarthans exist on Fodlan
2. Sothis rolls in from space, has a bunch of kids in Zanado, shares knowledge with the Agarthans that leads to them becoming super advanced
3. Agarthans decide they have no further need of a space dragon goddess and try to nuke her, Sothis hits back with a flood that kills most of them and drives the rest underground, where they sit around being eternally angry that nuking god didn't work out perfectly
4. Sothis fixes the world, makes humanity 2.0 to replace the Agarthans, and goes to take a nap
5. Per that dev interview, her kids decide to be assholes to the new humans, so they're receptive when some bandit the Agarthans talked into quietly shanking Sothis in her sleep rolls in shouting about liberation and handing out magic blood and creepy bone weapons, cut to the less murky parts of history.

Admittedly it involves taking Rhea at her word about some of the early stuff, but all we really get of the Agarthan perspective starts at the "oh poo poo we hosed up and are getting smote" stage and we only even get slivers of that.
#2 is important because while a lot of the Sothis Discourse™ includes stuff like "she did an imperialism" and "maybe the agarthans are justified in hating her", it very rarely mentions the fact that the slithers have nukes, are perfectly willing to use nukes, and hit aillel hard enough with nukes that over a thousand years later it's still a dead, perpetually burning wasteland.

personally, I was always under the impression that the slithers basically destroyed the continent/planet in their attempt to attack and dethrone dragon god, and the reason sothis went to bed for the next couple hundred years was because using space magic to fix an entire continent and make new humans/nabateans was kind of incredibly taxing for her

Shinji117
Jul 14, 2013

Blaziken386 posted:

#2 is important because while a lot of the Sothis Discourse™ includes stuff like "she did an imperialism" and "maybe the agarthans are justified in hating her", it very rarely mentions the fact that the slithers have nukes, are perfectly willing to use nukes, and hit aillel hard enough with nukes that over a thousand years later it's still a dead, perpetually burning wasteland.

personally, I was always under the impression that the slithers basically destroyed the continent/planet in their attempt to attack and dethrone dragon god, and the reason sothis went to bed for the next couple hundred years was because using space magic to fix an entire continent and make new humans/nabateans was kind of incredibly taxing for her

The Ailel strike was unique in two ways: it bounced off of GM’s force field into Ailel, and no other Javelin strike, which we do see the aftermaths of, comes anywhere close to Ailel’s destruction. It feels more likely that whatever defensive measure GM had on it also exacerbated the aftermath, or Ailel was built on a coal seam or something to keep burning for centuries. If the Slytherins had Ailel level Javelins, you’d think they’d use those ones rather than the comparatively tame Javelins they launch at BylethSothis and Rhea, two targets they would hardly hold back on.

Hopes gives us a good look at a Sothis who seems to have more of her memories, and it sure doesn’t make her come across as a peaceful being who was only ever benevolent and did nothing wrong and would definitely never do a colonialism. Rather the opposite- Hopes Sothis seems a lot more inline with Rhea and her disregard for the autonomy of others. The idea of Houses Sothis being a colonial tyrant felt off with her snarky mind gremlin persona, but Hopes Sothis comes across as a malicious, manipulative tyrant who leaps at the chance to guilt-trip Byleth into identity death so she can wear their body like a suit.

Shinji117 fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Jul 26, 2022

galagazombie
Oct 31, 2011

A silly little mouse!
Seteth seems the real kink in things. He’s just such a swell guy that I just can’t see him as some tyrannical despot, plus there’s the implication his wife might have been a human. He was in self imposed exile during Rhea’s reign so conveniently escapes culpability there, but that still leave’s him to be around during both Sothis’ war with the Agarthans and whatever “dragons ruling Fodlan” was going on between Sothis taking a nap and Nemesis’s revolution. Indech seems nice too, and Macuil seems outright antagonistic to Sothis. The Dragons are like the mole men in that we know so little about them it makes it hard to judge them morally. How many Dragons even were there? Do the crests account for the whole lot? If there were a whole civilization of them that got slaughtered you’d think there would be a lot more relic weapons and more than just 10 elites.

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
An interesting thing about Seteth is that he does not escape Hopes tweaking peoples characters. Because Byleth isn't around to make Rhea start doing dumb poo poo and make Seteth question Rhea's judgement/investigate, he's way more dogmatically loyal to her and orthodox in his thinking in Hopes. Like there's a conversation late in either SB or GW I can't remember which where Dimitri, Rhea, and Seteth have the following conversation (I have paraphrased everybody except Seteth because I distinctly remember his line as sticking out):

Rhea: "Hey Dimitri I think it would be a really good idea to go retake Garreg Mach."
Dimitri: "That sounds like a really stupid idea, actually. We're being owned by the Empire up and down, what the hell makes you think diverting key forces to retaking the Monastery will work?"
Rhea: "No it's cool see I'll just call a jihad, and the true faithful from all over Fodlan will rise up like a wave to join us and crush the Empire!"
Dimitri: "Right... well that sounds nice and all but I don't think inciting a peasant rabble to join us is going to change the battle calculus much."
Seteth: "You would suggest our enemy's might is greater than the faith of the people?! That is dire indeed!"

Seteth... my man, you're drinking the kool aid. Never drink the kool aid.

KittyEmpress
Dec 30, 2012

Jam Buddies

Shinji117 posted:

Hopes gives us a good look at a Sothis who seems to have more of her memories, and it sure doesn’t make her come across as a peaceful being who was only ever benevolent and did nothing wrong and would definitely never do a colonialism. Rather the opposite- Hopes Sothis seems a lot more inline with Rhea and her disregard for the autonomy of others. The idea of Houses Sothis being a colonial tyrant felt off with her snarky mind gremlin persona, but Hopes Sothis comes across as a malicious, manipulative tyrant who leaps at the chance to guilt-trip Byleth into identity death so she can wear their body like a suit.

I'm not sure if we are dealing with a Sothis with more of her memories, so much as a Sothis who spent 2 years post awakening in the headspace of a murder gremlin who has gone from battlefield to battlefield? I've only completed two routes, one good route one bad route, and bad route Sothis isn't a good person, but she doesn't seem ultra aware of everything, never references Rhea or the other Nabateans, or her past. She still seems to be confused about why she hates Shez/Arval so much - she just knows their energy drives her to want to murder the gently caress out of them.

You could read this as 'the real sothis', or you could read it as Sothis being a lot softer when she wakes up with amnesia and helps some idiot teach school children, rather than literally fights daily battles to the death and is involved in the killing of thousands.



Anyways, the dev interview talk on the war of liberation was just that the nabateans who openly ruled at the time were attacked, that nemesis had followers in the populace, and that it was too big of an event to memory hole. But they also note that about half of Fodlan still sided with the nabateans. If they were all explicitly cruel horrible monster rulers you'd think the numbers would be more schewed.

My personal theory is that, much like how we meet the 'nice' ones in Seteth and Flayn and Indech, it was mostly the rear end in a top hat ones who got rose up against quickly and thoroughly, where as the kinder/more even handed dragons were protected/able to fight back alongside their mortal followers.

Shinji117
Jul 14, 2013

KittyEmpress posted:

I'm not sure if we are dealing with a Sothis with more of her memories, so much as a Sothis who spent 2 years post awakening in the headspace of a murder gremlin who has gone from battlefield to battlefield? I've only completed two routes, one good route one bad route, and bad route Sothis isn't a good person, but she doesn't seem ultra aware of everything, never references Rhea or the other Nabateans, or her past. She still seems to be confused about why she hates Shez/Arval so much - she just knows their energy drives her to want to murder the gently caress out of them.

You could read this as 'the real sothis', or you could read it as Sothis being a lot softer when she wakes up with amnesia and helps some idiot teach school children, rather than literally fights daily battles to the death and is involved in the killing of thousands.



Anyways, the dev interview talk on the war of liberation was just that the nabateans who openly ruled at the time were attacked, that nemesis had followers in the populace, and that it was too big of an event to memory hole. But they also note that about half of Fodlan still sided with the nabateans. If they were all explicitly cruel horrible monster rulers you'd think the numbers would be more schewed.

My personal theory is that, much like how we meet the 'nice' ones in Seteth and Flayn and Indech, it was mostly the rear end in a top hat ones who got rose up against quickly and thoroughly, where as the kinder/more even handed dragons were protected/able to fight back alongside their mortal followers.
In Bad Route AG Sothis refers to Relics by what I have to assume was the titles of the Nabateans who died making them; Areadbhar is the Vigorous and the Aegis Shield is the Steadfast. (not really a spoiler but eh) so she certainly seems to have more memories of what’s going on than Houses Sothis.

Also, half of Fodlan didn’t side with Nabateans; Rhea and co dyed their hair (we knew Rhea did since FEH’s art made it super clear, and the Arval paralogue showed Flayn and Seteth also did) and presented themselves as Saints for a reason. Rhea’s nature is something that gets secretly passed down via Wilhelm, not common knowledge.

Shinji117 fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Jul 26, 2022

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
Yeah, Seteth and Flayn are what bother me most, as well. Sure, they weren't around for the last thousand years and don't really grasp what Rhea's been up to, and in Houses, Seteth meets Byleth and can piece together enough that he's willing to bail on her if need be, but where the gently caress were they at the age of the Nabateans?

DropsySufferer
Nov 9, 2008

Impractical practicality

Sapozhnik posted:

The Nabateans as rulers were hated to the extent that Rhea wasn't able to overwrite that aspect of history. She just left out the part about who exactly it was that the ten elites actually liberated Fodlan from.

I don't understand the appeal of this game and I regret buying it.

The gameplay is uninteresting and puddle-deep. I knew that going in and I expected that at least the story would do something interesting. It really did seem like it was going to do something interesting around chapter ~7 and then ... nothing happened. For the entire game. The war doesn't even end, there's just a tiny little text scroll explaining the immediate following events that seems for all the world like a fake ending but that's the actual real ending of the game. The kindest thing I can say about this game is that it gives you a bunch of extra support conversation cutscenes because the main story sucks rear end. The developers wanted this to be a second-class spinoff game and/or didn't want to have too "happy" an outcome that would have "invalidated" Houses and any of its selection of possible endings.

I was hoping the story would add more depth to the Slithers. Should have added some new slither characters with some backstory instead of using the only the 4 from hopes. Currently the slithers only characterization is villain. There should have even been a path to join them which would have fit with the new main character.

KittyEmpress
Dec 30, 2012

Jam Buddies

Shinji117 posted:

In Bad Route AG Sothis refers to Relics by what I have to assume was the titles of the Nabateans who died making them; Areadbhar is the Vigorous and the Aegis Shield is the Steadfast. (not really a spoiler but eh)

Neat, I got the bad route for GW and... she doesn't do anything to really hint that she knows much more than usual.

quote:

Also, half of Fodlan didn’t side with Nabateans; Rhea and co dyed their hair (we knew Rhea did since FEH’s art made it super clear, and the Arval paralogue showed Flayn and Seteth also did) and presented themselves as Saints for a reason. Rhea’s nature is something that gets secretly passed down via Wilhelm, not common knowledge.

We literally see the army fighting with dragons (Indech and Macuil) at their side during the opening cutscene. The same cutscene where we literally see Seiros turn into a dragon on the battlefield and wreck some of the Nemesis army's poo poo. And yes, it's blonde Seiros. The Nabatean side did have support of half of Fodlan - this is why it became such a huge war that almost destroyed the continent, and was completely impossible to write out of history even with her control, thus her altering the official story of it instead.

Yeah, she's kept that she's a dragon secret ever since then, but it wasn't a secret at the time that their side of the army was fighting on the 'we like dragons' side, versus the 'we hate dragons' side represented by Nemesis and the Elites.

jimmydalad
Sep 26, 2013

My face when others are unable to appreciate the :kazooieass:

AGDQ 2018 Awful Block Survivor
https://noisypixel.net/fire-emblem-three-hopes-low-sales-reviews-japan/

It looks like in Japan, the game is getting review-bombed due to the story.

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


I mean, I get it. I really like what's in this game, but the only other game I've played that I could compare the ending of this is Dragon Age Inquisition which was also hilariously blatant about it's ending being "Please buy the dlc for any actual story". Granted the difference is this is a musou full of characters I love with more character beats that improve them, while DAI was a super long crpg full of characters I hated so you know...one is clearly worse.

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.
Yeah but like.

The story rules for what it is?

The ending's a bit meh but beyond that it's just an excellent realisation of all the characters in Fodlan with a plot that has actual character development and arcs. Unlike 2/3.5 routes in 3H.

Also Japan thinks that Fates Rev is a good story.

Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
I must have missed the part where there was any character development whatsoever but then I only played the Lions route.

There are some differences in characterization that happened off-screen at the beginning of the game but that's about it.

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


Natural 20 posted:

Yeah but like.

The story rules for what it is?

The ending's a bit meh but beyond that it's just an excellent realisation of all the characters in Fodlan with a plot that has actual character development and arcs. Unlike 2/3.5 routes in 3H.

Also Japan thinks that Fates Rev is a good story.

I don't think the story rules, it's the new character beats that do. I liked the filling out of the setting but like SB is really just you running around the continent a bunch to put out a bunch of fires and then the game ends. It didn't get any good emotional beats in, at least to me. It certainly had the potential with both Duke Aegir and Arval but neither were really in the story long enough to provoke those reactions. Meanwhile for all the problems CF being hacked together had, it is drat emotionally satisfying and does a great job of investing you in Rhea as an antagonist.

Tae
Oct 24, 2010

Hello? Can you hear me? ...Perhaps if I shout? AAAAAAAAAH!

Natural 20 posted:


Also Japan thinks that Fates Rev is a good story.

Mind showing where, the only poll I can find is a top 5 which clearly doesn't have Fates

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.

Sapozhnik posted:

I must have missed the part where there was any character development whatsoever but then I only played the Lions route.

There are some differences in characterization that happened off-screen at the beginning of the game but that's about it.

Yeah my unhelpful advice is to not play the route with the super boring white dude.

Idk if Claude just got all the development this time but his entire character arc is exactly what I wanted it to be.

Tae posted:

Mind showing where, the only poll I can find is a top 5 which clearly doesn't have Fates

This is mainly remembered stuff from 6 years ago but iirc the Japanese reviews of Conquest were basically terrible and Rev was praised because they liked the golden route parts.

Genovera
Feb 13, 2014

subterranean
space pterodactyls

Claude's route was much more interesting to me than the other routes. I think that even the ending feels the best of the three because you have explicitly accomplished Claude's goal for the war. It's still a bit abrupt but Rhea is dead and it sort of feels appropriate for the Empire and Kingdom to continue fighting. Sure you beat a boss in the other routes too, but since your own side continues the war it feels worse. Claude suing for peace is actually something of an ending from the deer's perspective.

Epi Lepi
Oct 29, 2009

You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Sapozhnik posted:

I must have missed the part where there was any character development whatsoever but then I only played the Lions route.

There are some differences in characterization that happened off-screen at the beginning of the game but that's about it.

The lions are weird cause they've all had a bunch of character development, it just all happened in the 2 year timeskip. Dimitri, Felix, Sylvain and Rodrigue in particular are all very different from their pre and post timeskip versions in Three Houses.

Augus
Mar 9, 2015


jimmydalad posted:

https://noisypixel.net/fire-emblem-three-hopes-low-sales-reviews-japan/

It looks like in Japan, the game is getting review-bombed due to the story.

a lot of the reviews seem big mad about byleth not being the protagonist and claude being morally grey

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
Yeah from what I've gathered this thread is in the minority in liking the direction Claude was taken in Hopes.

Hellioning
Jun 27, 2008

I like Claude being more of a schemer, I was just kind of blindsided by Golden Deer going from fighting with the church in Three Houses to fighting the church here.

ChrisBTY
Mar 29, 2012

this glorious monument

Sydin posted:

Yeah from what I've gathered this thread is in the minority in liking the direction Claude was taken in Hopes.

Those are like, the best parts. Just seeing your protagonist from the last game as the dead-eyed killer they are and seeing Claude with actual ambitions and machinations.
It does make you wonder how soulless murder beast Byleth earned the loyalty of the entire next generation of Fodlan's rulers in 3 Houses though.

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

ChrisBTY posted:

Byleth earned the loyalty of the entire next generation of Fodlan's rulers in 3 Houses though.

Ultimately all the problems of the three houses could be sorted out if they just had the chance to talk, and Byleth is a really good listener.

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Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
Regarding Byleth in Hopes, It's kind of sad really. If you get them on your side they're this weird sad nerd who just sits off in the corner and doesn't interact with anyone. People talk a lot about how Byleth was a positive influence on the lords and houses that they team up with but equally so Houses talks a lot about how that camaraderie helped them to become a happier and more well-rounded person as well. Whichever path you chose in Houses Byleth ends the story with a circle of trusted friends and companions and it almost feels like Hopes steals that future away from them.

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