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Do any of the plots for each house really stand out or suck, or should I just pick the one with the characters I like the most?
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Jul 30, 2019 06:47
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 03:07 |
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I know the game's only been out a week, but seems like some of y'all have been playing quite a bit; anyone have huge buyer's remorse from picking either the Golden Deer or Black Eagles? In terms of characterization and plot. Both seem cool to me but I can't really tell if half their rosters are duds, because a lot of them don't say a whole bunch before you choose your house. I'm just staring at this select screen. Planning on doing all of them down the road but at my pace it's gonna be a while before I finish one playthrough.
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Aug 1, 2019 14:20
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I guess they meant everyone to play through multiple times, but it's weird how you make the House choice after getting maybe 1-3 lines of dialogue from each character and nothing else to go on, and then right after you choose a House you get a group scene where all the characters talk to you and banter together, giving you a good idea of their personalities and the house's dynamic. Feels like you should have had that intro scene for all three Houses before choosing one.
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Aug 6, 2019 03:46
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In terms of gameplay, is it feasible to just beat the game without recruiting many folks? I'd rather keep the houses intact for story reasons.
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Aug 26, 2019 17:46
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Thanks for the feedback on recruiting: gonna stick with grabbing one or two students I think. Mild kind of spoiler question for Chapter 5 (and the game in general): Sylvain has a personal connection to the mission in chapter 5, and he's not in my house. Are there bonuses or neat stuff if I bring him along on mission assistance? In general does the game encourage you to look for stuff like that?
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Aug 27, 2019 18:15
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Harrow posted:There is no penalty for letting Gilbert retreat and no reward for keeping him safe, so don't worry about him. Let him hold off some enemies while the rest of your team advances. Even on Blue Lions (the only route where he joins you) it doesn't matter. Haha I just did that mission too and thought it was scripted that he retreats, because the boss immediately critted him right after the cutscene. I wish you could opt out of deploying green units, since often (this mission especially) they end up a hindrance by Leeroy Jenkinsing ahead and pressuring you to keep up to avoid them stealing exp or getting killed.
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Sep 3, 2019 13:29
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It's really jarring how often they reuse maps in this, especially since many of them aren't particularly detailed. Like they couldn't have an intern drag the doodads around to make a few more layouts of "grassy area with a few blobs of trees"?
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Sep 21, 2019 16:13
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Amppelix posted:No because every battle map also needs to have a high-detail full scale version that's used in-battle and when you zoom in Just move the assets around, I've played the same trees and grass map like 5 times
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Sep 22, 2019 15:27
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Amppelix posted:i'm sure this is exactly how game development works and there would be no complications doing this Copy+pasting assets is exactly how game development works, but you're probably right that they bungled things on the back-end such that taking "flat grasslands map with some trees" and making a version that's "flat grasslands map with trees in a different configuration" took substantially enough time that it was better to reuse the same maps 3+ times.
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Sep 22, 2019 17:11
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So way late to the party but I just beat this and... I'm kinda mad at the entire back half of the Golden Deer Route? Like, the first half of the game was very nicely paced: you fight people who oppose an increasingly suspicious church that blatantly lies to you every step of the way, and learn about various characters and plot elements that all come together in a dramatic collision. Throughout the the first half characters question what's happening and wonder how they can solve these mysteries. Then the second half of the game, you... Essentially join/become the Church and wage a war against the empire. That's it for almost the rest of the game. You fight the empire and beat it. Why did Edelgard do this? What's driving her? Who knows. Dimitri may as well not exist since he runs in from offscreen and immediately dies the same chapter. Does anyone care that the church was incredibly shady and Rhea turned into a literal dragon and also hey remember how crest stones are some ancient dark secret that are also fueling murder monsters from the empire? Or how there was this entire faction of evil wizards running around? Remember how you got shoved in a pocket dimension and then were fully reborn as a Goddess? No, no one really is interested or wants to talk about it. Fortunately after you beat the Empire, you get a letter from dead Hubert explaining that actually those evil wizards from the beginning of the game are still around, and they're the ones behind everything, and also here's where to find them. He really should have mailed that letter earlier. Then you go to the evil wizards in a really cool cyber dungeon and they awaken their dead dude, for some reason they didn't do this earlier. You immediately kill them, and Claude's like "thanks, we sure won". Roll credits. At least when you finally rescue Rhea she dumps the entire backstory on you (after taking a nap for a chapter). Would've been nice to dole that out bit by bit instead of keeping it until right before the final boss battle. There is cool stuff going on in this setting, it's just frustrating how much of it happens offscreen or is entirely left to be learned in another playthrough. I'm okay with doing multiple playthroughs to learn more about the other side. I don't like how you need to do multiple playthroughs to learn ANYTHING about the major factions.
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Dec 5, 2019 13:03
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McTimmy posted:Part of the problem is Claude's translation ripping out a good chunk of his character. He doesn't like the church, is blatantly using them and is perfectly fine with Rhea being dead or even killing her himself since he views her as an obstacle for his own goals. Things like his relationship with Byleth are also trickier to translate in a natural-sounding way. Claude starts referring to Byleth as a sibling in the Japanese which is clunky to say in English so he uses like four different addresses and whatnot. Yeah, like reading between the lines and looking at his epilogue card, Claude has a lot going on! It's almost entirely offscreen though which is nuts considering how much dialogue is in this game. The Almyra army showing up on your side, for example, should have been a huge twist, but the way it was executed 1) Wasn't entirely surprising, given several characters' entire Thing is about how Almyrans are actually decent and just racistly stereotyped, and 2) Their impact is unclear. We were doing fine steamrolling the empire before they showed up, we did fine afterwards without them ever appearing again? The GD plot should have been explicitly about betrayals and fractions within the Alliance, and convincing your allies and party to trust the Almyrans army who you NEED because the Empire is about to snuff you out, while also leaving real doubt about whether Claude is genuinely bringing them in to "help" or essentially staging a coup. If I just read a plot synopsis I would assume that all that stuff was part of the text, but it's just stuff I wonder about after the fact while ingame we just talk about how we're such good friends and work together so well. When Claude says "hey teach you're my best friend we have the power of friendship," I genuinely can't tell if it's the game cleverly hiding his true self or if I'm supposed to believe him. Which is cool if that's the former, but in a game with such broad wild strokes in other areas you have to make that more explicit at some point. When the game literally never tells me why the main antagonist became a villain or what she wanted, I don't trust that it's being deliberately subtle in other areas instead of just leaving out details. It's not really the bullet points of the plot that bug me, it's the pacing, execution, and how much critical motivation is left for me to find out from people who played the other paths. Bananasaurus Rex posted:Also late to the party and also did GD route first. If you want the entire full story you will have to play all four routes (or just watch the dialogue scenes on YouTube). Even then some things are glossed over. Yeah, that seems nuts to me. It's one thing if I think Edelgard is one kind of character, and then when I play her side I learn what she's really like, what really drives her and what she's after. Instead I'm just wondering who the gently caress is this girl and what's her deal? And I need to do another playthrough to learn ANYTHING about her. Same with Dimitri but honestly he's such a nonentity in GD that if I didn't know anything about this game I wouldn't even think BL was a playable path. It's more an active problem for Edelgard in GD because in terms of plot function she's basically the main antagonist driving the entire plot of the game .
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Dec 5, 2019 15:42
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Xad posted:Yeah, this is kinda how I felt in my BE run (which was my first one): Oh wow okay Edelgard is the flame emperor, no big surprise there, but I'm not gonna just immediately killer her Rhea, what the gently caress. And the church seems kinda shady anyways... Yeah exactly. I'm also kinda disappointed because the concept had such potential. From hearing early impressions it sounded like you train and grow alongside these people, then you all get fractured and are forced to fight each other, and every side has a motivation that makes sense to them. Except the impact of that is weakened because 1) The houses rarely interact with each other in part 1 (there should have been way more cutscenes of Edelgard/Dimitri/Claude hanging out and trying to solve the mystery of the church), and 2) You get no insight into what the other side wants.
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Dec 6, 2019 19:34
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Hellioning posted:I think they put too much into alternate routes. My first route was Verdant Wind, and I had absolutely no idea what Edelgard's motivations are, and I knew even less about Dimitri. Forcing you to play a long game three times (or just watch cutscenes on youtube) to get basic character motivation sucks. Someone posted that they should have gone the Nier automata route and made each "roll credits" just part of a Real Playthrough, and I kinda like that. Drastically cut down on the monastery filler, limit missions to chapter battles, side quests, and paralogues only, maybe make replaying Part 1 entirely optional, you get three or four 15 hour playthroughs to get the big picture.
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Dec 6, 2019 20:16
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eating only apples posted:Does she? With whom? Ingrid and Claude are pretty fun, the VA's get to goof around a bit. Sydin posted:The straightest character in the game is also the most boring. I'm shocked, are you shocked? This is honestly the weakest part of fire emblem as a franchise. Aside from the Main Characters who aren't allowed to die, everyone else only gets developed in little side skits that happen at somewhat random points in each playthrough, and they don't get to actually do anything dramatic or touch the plot at all besides chiming in with the rest of the crowd in between missions. Tender Bender fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Dec 9, 2019 |
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Dec 9, 2019 03:48
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blizzardvizard posted:Yeah now that I think about it BL and GD could probably have benefited from having The Immaculate One fight as well, if only to better establish the coming paradigm shift after their respective epilogues It's absolutely wild that GD ends with "and then you fight the zombie of the guy Rhea killed a long time ago to kick off her thousand year reign of lies", and then Rhea just quietly fucks off. I'm not even sure if she dies offscreen, as far as i can remember in GD she's severely wounded and resting, and then you never hear from her again and Byleth takes over.
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Dec 9, 2019 20:03
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I was hyped for three hopes but ended up feeling so nostalgic for this game that I'm giving this another run through first! I'm thinking about picking up the DLC. If I beat the side story on normal, am I able to get the Ashen Wolves on hard in the main game? I play hard because "normal" is just way too easy, but it sounds like the side story is more challenging due to how restricted you are. If I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall I'd rather just pop down to normal to get through it.
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Jun 26, 2022 17:06
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AlternateNu posted:DLC normal is about the same level as main campaign hard, yes. And you don't even have to complete the DLC to be able to recruit the Ashen Wolves, I believe. I think you only have to reach a certain chapter in the DLC. But you might as well finish it because you get some sweet starting loot if you have a completed DLC file. Thanks, I guess my question is if I clear up to those chapters in normal, can I recruit the characters in my Hard playthrough?
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Jun 26, 2022 18:22
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Sudden Javelin posted:yeah the dlc cleared at any difficulty unlocks stuff for any future playthrough at any difficulty Melomane Mallet posted:Yes, as long as you're not past the time skip. Cool, thanks! Yeah I started the DLC on normal/classic, first mission was fine, but with a few of the bosses hitting unexpectedly hard plus no-warning- reinforcements already arriving in this first mission, I'm okay sticking to normal  Anyway I went from "thinking about another three houses playthrough" on Saturday, to buying the DLC, starting that side story as well as a Black Eagles run, and spending an hour this morning building a spreadsheet mapping out my progression plan for all the characters including planned mastered abilities/etc. I kind of ruined my first run through the game because my OCD made me do every single optional auxiliary battle and minmax every monastery day even though my guys were already way strong enough for Hard. I'm hoping the huge XP and skill boosts from the statues in New Game Plus (and from being professor level A+ from the start) will let me free my mind and avoid overly grinding this time.
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Jun 27, 2022 18:00
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I'm halfway through White Clouds in my Black Eagles playthrough, and I'm loving the Edelgard characterization. We'll see how I feel once her plans are unrolled, but right now I'm ride or die for her. It's also reminding me how incredibly frustrating it is that you get none of this stuff in separate playthroughs; she was a complete blank slate when I played Golden Deer a few years ago, just a villain turn with no rhyme or reason. Here, she's explaining her vision of the world and what motivates her, things that would have been great to know about the primary antagonist on my Golden Deer run. The contrast is that Claude and Dimitri of course completely disappear as characters. If I hadn't played as his house, I'd have no idea about Claude's background, his dream of open borders, etc. I think it was a huge mistake to wall off the playthroughs, you should at least know who the characters are and what they want. You could add more information and flavor when you actually play as them, but as it is, it's really unsatisfying to just have no idea what any of the characters care about at all beyond the ones you're controlling. My dream revamp of this game would have White Clouds involving all three houses working together to unravel the mystery, maybe have the player choose a house right before the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion. Jeritza disappears right before then so you could have set it so he's one of the house professors, and Byleth is asked to step in. Idk I'm just spitballing here. Tender Bender fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jul 11, 2022 |
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Jul 11, 2022 17:09
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I think it was a very deliberate decision to not let you know what the other lords are up to as you go through the story. The central tragedy of Three Houses is that no one ever has the full picture, and that that is the heart of a lot of the conflict in the story. I definitely agree that the game would have been better served by not making you play through White Clouds at least three times to get the full story, but I think the "paths that will never cross" narrative is a perfectly fine choice outside of that. Yeah, I'm okay with not getting the whole picture, but I think they erred too conservatively in exactly how little of that picture you get. They could have had Edelgard share some of what her vision is without giving you the full explainer or tragic backstory. There's a lot of pathos there for the taking when you have to turn against your former friends and students, but the game doesn't set you up to experience that until your second playthrough. The first time around I'm killing former students, but they're people I talked to maybe once and don't really know anything about. Zulily Zoetrope posted:If you're jonesing for a revamped story where Byleth doesn't take over a class after the prologue and you don't have to play through a year's worth of broadly the same storyline, well, I hope you like Warriors games! I'm excited to pick that up once I finish this playthrough, assuming I'm not completely burned out on fire emblem like I was the first time around. I'm doing new game + now and the statue perks plus instant professor level A+ means I'm avoiding the grinding/optimization that slogged down my first run, so hopefully it'll be relatively quick.
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Jul 11, 2022 18:47
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Oh ok yeah. There's definitely some of that across the stories, but specifically playing as Golden Deer first gets you the worst of it. That route is a victim of the game's scope; the first storyline they wrote was one where you start with the Black Eagles, but part ways with Edelgard when the war starts and stay with the church. In that story Byleth and Edelgard have some history and you know where Edelgard is coming from. Verdant Wind has very few Claude-centric plot beats because it's a revised version of that storyline rather than an original one, and it comes through clearly in Byleth and Edelgard's interactions in particular. Ah, that's interesting, thanks. That also provides context for the letter from Hubert after you defeat them; You have history with him so he trusted you with that information because of your bond.
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Jul 11, 2022 19:35
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I feel like there's a lot of potential scheming by Claude, with an open question of how much he isn't telling you about his intentions. His route ends with him returning to rule Almyra after having succeeded in his goals to break down the borders, and leaving behind a ruler who he has a strong personal relationship with and relations dramatically improved with Fodlan overall after the Almyran army dramatically showed up to save the day. He obviously didn't plan on Edelgard's whole deal but he made the most of it and it definitely seems like there was more going on in his head than just "We'll save the world with kindness and friendship, Teach!" The problem is it's all subtext and left to the player to decide.
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Jul 11, 2022 20:25
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indigi posted:agreed. I feel like they could have done slitherers as a DLC expansion (rather than side-mission) that was only barely hinted at in the main game and fully explored in its own post-credits campaign, maybe even set after another 5-10 year time jump, but trying to include it alongside the other stuff detracts from everyone else’s plots (except for maybe Lysithea) I feel like as others have said they should have been omitted entirely. Maybe rolled more directly into the bad faction of Edelgard's uncle in the empire.
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Jul 12, 2022 14:59
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So I've been really enjoying my Black Eagles play through, sided with edelgaard and got to the time skip and... I've seen folks say this route got the least amount of attention, but wow the production drop off is incredible. First, when Rhea reveals she's a dragon in the holy tomb, the game just shows a static jpeg of the dragon and the characters yell "Ahhh, run away!" and that's the end of it. You just go to the next scene, I guess you all just ran off? Then instead of a cinematic or anything at the end of the battle of Garreg Mach, they just show another jpeg of Rhea as a dragon, then Edelgarde and Hubert say "LOOK OUT, PROFESSOR!" and that's it. Smash cut to five years later. No cutscene, no real effort to portray what happened at all. It's really disappointing. I get that this route suffered because they ran out of time, but I can't believe they didn't patch in at least something to better tell the story. I wouldn't expect a new fully animated cutscene but at least something, the cut corners are so jarring that it completely pulled me out of the experience.
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Aug 11, 2022 14:00
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Endorph posted:tbf theres some other stuff like that in the other routes. like claude saying 'btw dimitri died off screen' in golden deer with no fanfare and then hes just actually dead Oh yea I hated that my first run, lol Valentin posted:yeah this is just kind of the three houses experience. very much a progressivelyworsedrawnhorse.jpg game. lots of promise early on that gets weighed down by the increasingly boring monastery loop/lack of production resources for certain routes/badly unbalanced writing (and then the deathblow, realizing you have to do white clouds four times if you want to see the rest), and a lot of it comes back to if you like the characters enough to balance that stuff out. That route absolutely gets the worst of it in many ways production-wise, though. Yeah I think I'm going through the exact same arc I did my first playthrough three years ago, "This is great! I'm gonna play this forever!" > "This is starting to drag but things are coming to a head in White Clouds!" > "I can't believe this shipped as a finished product, I just want to finish it and move on". The team pretty clearly bit off more than they could chew, I'm glad they tried but wish they narrowed their scope to something they could better execute on.
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Aug 11, 2022 19:00
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 03:07 |
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Fajita Queen posted:Axes are extremely good, and are arguably the best of the melee weapon types. The lower accuracy is mitigated by supports, weapon arts, and the hit+20 skill among other things, and they do the most damage. They are also, critically, the weapon of choice for several extremely powerful classes - Brigand, which gives you Death Blow despite being kind of a bad class in and of itself, and then Wyvern Rider and Wyvern Lord which are extremely strong flying classes that also have Axefaire (+5 axe damage) inherently. Axes also get an indirect buff from the Divine Pulse mechanic, since if you get an unfortunate miss in a big spot you can rewind and try something else instead of having to restart the entire map (or losing the character but c'mon no one does that). It lets you make use of their massive damage while reducing the impact of their downside.
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Feb 23, 2024 13:38
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