#i only have conquest & revelations (never bothered with birthright)

[devotedlystrangewizard]

time for my once every 6 months fire emblem fates playtime i guess

[synergysilhouette]

Things in "Engage" that confused/frustrated me (Spoilers)

Just finished Engage! While I enjoyed certain aspects of it, there were a few things about it that bothered me.

Why couldn't the Emblems revive Alear immediately instead of having Veyle revive them (and then watch them die for a second time)?

The "Sombron is your father" didn't really have any long-term consequences. It was a twist I saw coming because of previous installments, but all we see if a flashback of evil Alear (it would make more sense as a nightmare, imo). When we go to the past, they aren't like this at all; they're pretty apathetic. I'm also confused about how Alear was "willed" into becoming a divine dragon.

Rushed/no development for the villains. 3.5. Marnie's redemption arc. Marnie's game to kill a bunch of people (and her backstory rashly explains her desire for praise/attention), but when Veyle is being brainwashed, she's furious. We never see her really interact with Vayle, so the revelation that they had a friendship instead of a professional relationship felt super rushed. 3.6. Zephia helps us out. She talked a big game about worshipping Lord Sombron, then helps us on a whim when she's about to die. She then reveals she wanted a child and undervalued the Hounds. It would've been neat if she was secretly working for Lumera and acting on her orders, or that she was secretly Vayle and Alear's mother. It'd be neat if it went into a branching route similar to Birthright/Conquest, but I digress. In any case, 3.5 and 3.6 exemplify how underdeveloped Zephia and the Hounds are, especially with the confessions she and Griss shared at their deaths. 3.7. Ivy having little plot relevance after returning the rings to us. It sucks how she and Hortensia start off as villains, then when they join us, they eventually fade to the background. Plus Zelkov made it clear he doesn't even like her and just sees his loyalty as an obligation; wouldn't him betraying her (because she betrayed her father) make more sense? And despite summoning Sombra, Hyacinth is immediately killed for sustenance. Feels like a waste of a villain. I'd enjoy it if Sombra entrusted the Hounds and Zephia to him to lead. Plus removing Sombron's craving for royal blood would also keep Morion alive as well. 3.8. Sombron's brief backstory deserved more attention, but instead it's crammed in there at the last minute and rushed. Rather than "I came from another world and my family was slaughtered," maybe all that stuff happened in Elyos, and it made Sombron turn against the lands, as well as having a protective, twisted love for his children; he'd emotionally abuse them until they were emotionless like Alear or fearful like Veyle. It'd parallel how Zephia had no concept of "real love." His conversation with Alear made me cringe: "I'm alone in this world and unloved, I'll slaughter my kids since they're means to an end, but if you commit patricide, you're a monster."

Why did Sombron have so many kids? It feels needless to mention them if they aren't involved in the plot or flashbacks and only Alear and Veyle survive. Past Alear mentions how some of them were killed, but it feels needless to mention them. I get that this plays into why Alear fears the curropted, but I wish we had more time to see the weight of it (ie seeing one of the children killed due to Alear's failure). Staying in the past a bit longer would also help flesh out Zephia's character a bit more. Or the plot could've nixed the 12 rings idea and made them 12 (or less) of Sombron's kids he needed to reabsorb in order to attain full power.

Nix the bittersweet battle against Lumera. It feels copied from Fates (Revelation) with Mikoto: your queen mother dies early on, only to battle you towards the end, hoping to be together forever. It would've been nice to have her survive! It sucks that the last three protagonists of FE games are left orphans. Plus her asking Veyle to call her "Mother" and Veyle saying she already has a mother feels hollow since we don't know much about her and Alear's biological mothers.

Was it ever explained if Alear can turn into a dragon? Veyle said she can't, but I don't recall it being addressed if Alear could.

Nit-picks: you need a pact ring for platonic S-supports. That's ridiculous to me. And while I liked the voice acting, the voice direction could've been better.

[tokyotheglaive]

FE14 for the ask meme (so answer everything, heheheh)!

oh BOY I haven't thought about this in a Hot Minute but apparently I still have Much Feelings (TM) about FE14. All answers below the break!

(Want to send me one? Want to see the original questions?)

the first character i ever fell in love with: Scarlet. As soon as I saw her, that was it, game over, everyone else step aside

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: Saizo. I liked the idea of him and Kaze working as a parallel to Corrin and their sibs on opposite sides (at least if you do Conquest), but ultimately he fizzled for me

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: Kagero/Orochi. I still like them, but I guess I like the memory of liking them? The fandom never really gave me the dynamic I craved, and I wasn't put together enough to ever write anything for them myself.

my ultimate favorite character™: Mozu. I know the Donnel archetype annoys a lot of people but I love her for it. Get big and strong, my daughter. Kill god. Rebuild your village. You deserve the world.

prettiest character: a ridiculously hard question when the whole cast is pretty (at minimum in the generic way) but I'd have to say Reina. That's just a pretty lady right there.

my most hated character: there is competition for this one because the characters I hate I really hate, but I think the winner for Tokyo's Most Hated is Laslow. I hate his stupid face. Why are you even here. Go bother someone who likes your trope.

my OTP: oh god this one is also hard if only because none of the ships really make OTP status for me. If I had to pick, I'd say probably Charlotte/money just kidding mostly Sakura/Hana

my NOTP: Camilla/anyone.

favorite episode: gonna pretend this means "favorite map"; my favorite Birthright map was the Woods of the Forlorn where you fight Leo because it had fantastic vibes; for Conquest, definitely the Great Bridge of Suzanoh where you fight Takumi, again for the vibes

saddest death: if we're talking canonical/inevitable deaths, then Oboro and Hinata at the aforementioned Great Bridge of Suzanoh. I Care Them Much.

favorite season: again, gonna pretend this means "favorite route". Also preparing for the ghosts of FE fans past to gang up on me as a fake fan because my favorite route was Birthright. Conquest made me angry with dumb decisions, and Revelations was what it was.

least favorite season: Conquest. Fuck Garon and playing his silly little games.

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: uh oh I don't know who people love(d). uhhhhh do people like Kaden? Because I cannot stand him.

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: ...Dwyer. Look, I know he's discount serial-numbers-filed-off L as a butler. Let me live.

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: SCARLET. DESERVED. BETTER. Mozu also falls under this classification but she wasn't shafted by the narrative nearly as much.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: I...straight up don't have one of these. This question is too judgmental, don't like it.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: tbh most of the ships in this game qualify for this. I'll say Ryoma/Scarlet but eh. I'm not too invested :P

[themoomoorn]

Hoshidon’t You Dare Be Peaceful, Corrin

After spotting the well-tread topic of Hoshido and Nohr again, there’s now plenty of spotlight as to why Hoshido is as flawed as Nohr, and moreso in some ways.  However, the issue I have with that is that Hoshido’s flaws are rarely, if ever, presented in the story itself, and when they are (I.E the Kouga-Mokushu debacle which led to the former’s prince, Asura, being forced to live as a vagrant), they aren’t played up as being bad, or worthy of note.  And heck, some things like Mikoto’s brain-mushing peaceful behavior barrier?  Viewed almost as a good thing.  

Ryoma shitting on the way of Bushido while espousing its values all the while?  Never portrayed as a flaw, whereas Xander’s devotion to his country and fear-driven loyalty to his father definitely are.  Corrin will always harp on Xander for his loyalty to his country in Birthright, whereas they have absolutely nothing harsh to say to Ryoma for withholding medicine from Elise on Conquest.  Camilla’s maternal latching onto Corrin is portrayed as gross and disturbing on Birthright, whereas Hinoka’s almost pathetic fixation on saving Corrin at the expense of her relationship with her siblings and her other royal duties is portrayed as noble and tragic; Other characters question her choosing the way of the warrior to begin with, but that’s more Hoshidan gender roles at play.

 Azura will happily stick by Corrin on Birthright and Revelation, but on Conquest, she has to be forcibly dragged along as a prisoner by Hoshidans three Chapters later in order to actually fight at Corrin’s side.  Despite having been kidnapped and mistreated in Hoshido, she still vastly prefers it over Nohr, and if you give her a spouse and her son, she raises him in all-Hoshidan trappings, with his regular ending and the Heirs of Fate DLC having him work for the Hoshidan government.  Azura’s Hoshidan Corrin support has her prostrating how she had the audacity to be Corrin’s “replacement” Hoshidan sibling, while her Nohrian support has her trying to dissuade Corrin’s masochistic guilt from killing Hoshidans.

Garon’s being horny for his concubines is shown as a bad thing, and it resulted in the remaining Nohrian royals clinging together, with some of them featuring distressing behaviors such as Camilla’s maternal overbearing (that escalates once Corrin is bought into the picture) and Xander’s fear of his father.  Sumeragi being a horndog in his youth - something that you can only find through Fuga’s Revelation support, and something that the localization actually erased - is not.  Him having his wife Ikona (the mother of the four Hoshidan siblings) and his mistress Mikoto (the mother of Corrin) living together is paid no mind, likely because it has no overtly negative consequences.  The separatism and penting up of their emotions is generally dismissed - Corrin is with them now, so nothing to see here.  There’s consequences when Takumi’s distrust of Corrin allows for Anankos to overcome him and manipulate him, but it only plays out on Conquest, as its Birthright equivalent is stopped within ten seconds of its discovery.  

Ah, and lest we forget the lack of consequences of Ryoma flat-out lying to Corrin about them being the “blood” siblings. 

Revelations features two poignant scenes of the Hoshidan siblings getting final moments with Mikoto and Sumeragi’s manipulated spirits, while the Nohrian siblings get left high and dry other than a token shock scene of Garon getting eaten by Anankos.

While Corrin retains their naive, kind, yet pragmatic (when required) behavior on both Revelation and Conquest (albeit the latter takes it to masochistic levels of guilt), Birthright sees them as being uncharacteristically violent.  They show absolutely no quarter to their foes, finds the average Nohrian a mook at best and sick (like Niles) at worst, ultimately doesn’t bother to consider their adoptive families’ reasons for their behavior, or even how the majority of the country supports Garon’s bid for conquest only because they’re constantly plagued by famine and resource-strapped.  While the player may lose out on Azura and the truth, Valla, and Anankos, choosing Hoshido is framed positively.  No consequences are faced for choosing them in anger, for being unquestionably violent.  Corrin never questions this choice, and that’s fine.  The other routes frame picking either side as poor options, but you wouldn’t get that idea if you played Birthright, because Corrin is lauded for picking this “right” choice. 

What’s more, not only do you have this violence be excused, but you get one of the game’s derided “Avatar favoritism” moments - Flora protecting the Ice Tribe from Hoshido and from Garon’s wrath is entirely (and melodramatically) pinned on the latter by Corrin, not even remotely factoring the idea that these non-Hoshidans are trying to defend themselves, and you have Felicia and Jakob having the audacity to shame her for protecting her damn family and doing her duty as future leader of the tribe as heinous because she’s not being nice or loyal to Corrin - heck, they don’t even bring up Garon bringing the heat on to her like Corrin does, it’s because she used to be one of Corrin’s servants!

There’s meta-textual favoritism towards Hoshido that the localization actually did try to downplay, but because there’s so much of it in the game, there was only so much they could, well, downplay.  The most obvious examples are the softer lyrics for the light half of Azura’s song (”The incorruptible silver sword/will slash in order to wake/those slumbering hopes/Bringing peace to the world”), and the renaming of each version of Chapter 6.

Now this dissonance is nowhere near as severe as 3H blatantly presenting Edelgard as a narcissistic, childish variation of the Red Emperor archetype and one of the de-facto villains alongside Those Who Slither, while game dialogue and extraneous material like Heroes go out of their way to make that seem untrue and present her as a cute revolutionary and a good person (*snort*).  But it’s still pretty present, and even when I got the Special Edition all-in-one cartridge of Fates mailed to my apartment back in February of 2016 and beat the game to the ground, this particular dissonance really bothered me, and in a way it was the reason why I ultimately didn��t 100% the game the way I did Awakening, or Blazing Blade, or Sacred Stones.

[crystalelemental]

New Mystery of the Emblem is complete, and I have many thoughts.

Let’s just start with this: holy shit this was so much more fun than Shadow Dragon.  For three major reasons:

No one is expected to die.  Shadow Dragon bothered me immediately, because I’m required to let someone die in the prologue to escape.  That sucks, and I hated it.  I have never gotten over that, or the expectation to kill more units to access the bonus chapters.  Which, sure, you can argue are optional.  But those characters appear in this game and are recognized, so clearly those happened now didn’t they?!

SUPPORT CONVERSATIONS!  Okay, they’re not like...actual support conversations.  They’re Radiant Dawn style, where you have conversations with allies at your base and only your base.  But there’s a tier of 1-3 for most characters, and they’re essentially support conversations, and god Shadow Dragon was impossible to get in to without those.  Seriously, I may enjoy the gameplay of Fire Emblem overall, but I do not enjoy units for combat performance, I enjoy them for being characters, and thank god they feel like characters this time.

Actually interesting story.  Shadow Dragon was pretty boring, frankly.  Very basic concepts presented, not really a lot going on.  But New Mystery actually expands on a lot of this stuff.  I’ll get into that more below.

Suffice to say, I really enjoyed it more than Shadow Dragon.  I think in terms of ranking, I’d definitely place it above Shadow Dragon, Birthright, Revelation, and Sacred Stones.  Currently I think I’m putting it above Conquest too.  While Conquest is similarly fun to play, New Mystery has the benefit of being more interesting as a story.  I’m hesitant to put it over Echoes, though.  Listen, Echoes sucks as a game.  It’s really not fun to play, almost at all.  New Mystery is fun to play, so this should be obvious.  But while the story is improved, I wouldn’t put it anywhere near the level of Echoes.

See, the main thing with New Mystery is that it filled in gaps that made the world feel more organic than just generic medieval kingdom with magic and dragons and shit.  They delve into what the Fire Emblem here is, about the history of the dragons, and why, say, Tiki’s kept locked away for so long.  Also why Medeus is a villain, and out to eliminate humanity.  Turns out, he was the only Earth Dragon to listen to Naga and convert to a manakete, and even helped guard the seal over the dragons who were slowly losing their minds.  But humans, as soon as they had that advantage, exploited dragons.  Several maps showcase that these deteriorating dragons are being kept in thrall to human tribes who use their power for personal gain.  Exploitation of dragons led Medeus to despise humans, and seek to overthrow them.  Which is pretty cool!  I’m on board with that!  Tiki’s said to also be deteriorating without the seal in place, and that, as a powerful divine dragon, she’s bring ruin to the world if she weren’t contained.  So they basically kept her in stasis to avoid disaster.  Which...okay, Fallen Tiki should’ve just been that.  A feral Tiki that’s no longer all there, instead of just “Gharnef’s power is controlling her.”  Shadow Dragon’s momentarily irritable Tiki wasn’t shit compared to what they implied could happen here.

The trouble is that the game is still pretty basic.  Beyond this bit of worldbuilding, it’s still very much conflict between the kingdoms, again, all ochestrated by Gharnef, who’s working for Medeus.  Again.  They play around more with their themes and set up some cool ideas, but it’s not the most compelling of narratives by any means.  What’s also not helped is that, while support conversations exist to make characters more engaging, it’s not all of them, and not all are done well.  Some supports are just a sort of filling in the gaps.  At least, with the MU they are.  Maybe with other characters they get a bit more.

Speaking of MU, let’s divert a bit to talk about them.  Kris is like...the one MU I have heard universal hate for.  My best guess is that this is due to fans of the original FE3, who didn’t like their inclusion in the first place, because otherwise I have no idea what the problem is.  Kris seems fine.  Really boring, but fine.  The only reason they’re kinda my least favorite is because they’re supposed to be their own character but don’t do anything.  Like, Robin has a personality and is fun, and has a great dynamic with Chrom.  Corrin, for all the faults borne of Fates, feels pretty much like a typical Fire Emblem lord.  Byleth...okay, I don’t like Byleth much, I feel like their inclusion kinda hinders the game’s narrative a little bit, but otherwise they’re pretty blank and exist mostly as a support for the other lords.  But Kris...doesn’t do much of anything.  They don’t really have a dynamic with anyone, including Marth, and are just sort of...generic loyal knight with no knowledge of the world for some reason, and who only ever trained with their now dead grandfather.  Beyond that, they don’t really exude any particular personality.  Which is probably part of the problem with supports; everyone supports with Kris, but they don’t contribute much, so it’s mostly the other character doing stuff at them.  They just don’t have much to do.

With one exception.  We gotta talk about the other, presumably new character: Katarina.  I actually love Katarina.  Which is a shame, I pulled one of her in Heroes once and made her into a manual because I didn’t care.  Oh well.  Anyway, Katarina’s got a pretty solid story behind her, and is one of the more compelling pieces of the plot overall.  She’s part of a band of assassins who were orphans, taken in by Lady Eremiah.  Eremiah is super cut-throat, willing to sacrifice the lives of these children to accomplish her goals, which mostly seem to be serving Gharnef.  While Legion’s boring and lame, Clarine and Katarina are spectacular.  Clarine starts off really obnoxious, and kind of a bitch, but the chapter where she finally falls hit me pretty hard.  Katarina’s supports with Kris also give a bit more context to what had happened, particularly with the talk about how Clarine and Katarina share a birthday, because they never had one but Clarine just decided on a day and that was the end of it.  It’s a really cute dynamic you get to experience kind of in reverse.  You see how bad things have gotten, then get the history of what used to be, and why Katarina couldn’t leave.  Eremiah’s the same.  Gharnef shows up as she’s dying and reminds her of her own history.  The orphanage she worked at was burned to the ground and the children slaughtered in the last war.  In despair, Gharnef appeared and convinced her that if the children were strong, they wouldn’t die so easily, leading her to take in the next wave and train them for strength alone, all the while becoming corrupted by Gharnef’s influence.  That last part aside, pretty compelling.  I do enjoy narratives that play with the idea of kindness being manipulated to a sensible, but corrupted, conclusion.

My main problem is that Gharnef sucks.  He’s not an interesting villain at all.  He just kind of exists, and was largely motivated by getting passed over by his master when it came to who got the cool spells.  He’s a big, stinky baby man whining about not being the favorite, and I could not care less.  Yet he’s supposed to be this grand puppetmaster, of a particularly shitty puppet.  Hardin was an ally in Shadow Dragon, who became an enemy this game.  Why?  Oh, he was mad that Nyna didn’t like him back, and got super buttmad about it.  Which is honestly fair at this point, since they describe it as a depressive episode.  He gets to marry this woman he loves, only to find out she never reciprocated the feeling at all.  Feel like it’s fair to be upset.  But then Gharnef shows up and allegedly corrupts his soul with the Darksphere.  Which...okay, first?  Lame.  Second?  Why do we have that, and why does it do that?  This was a gift from Naga, why the hell is it so dangerous?  Third, super lame!  It takes away all agency Hardin had as a villain and removes it down to “oh, he was possessed.”  Which sucks, because the exact inverse happened for Michalis, and now he’s super cool!

His character arc this game was spectacular!  Showing up to take Minerva away from her captors.  Giving her refuge in the desert and helping her rendezvous with Marth?  There’s something going on, compared to last game where he was just some lame baby man who wanted power.  Minerva says Gharnef lost his hold, and Michalis is like “Oh, no, I would never bend to him.  I killed dad because we disagreed on Macedon fighting to become a major power in the world again, and he tried to have me exiled.  I did it for me, and regret nothing.”  Honestly loved that.  But when asked why he’s helping now, it turns out it’s for their sister.  He talks about how, after he was defeated, he was near death, and the first thing he saw when he came to was Maria kneeling over him, praying to the gods to save him.  He was so touched by her kindness despite his actions, that he’s now solely driven to save her as his final act.  He doesn’t regret his actions, but recognizes that he lost and needs to do something, and god damn if it’s not going to be saving his little sister.  That’s super cool!  I’m so on board with this dude now!  One of the bigger antagonists of Shadow Dragon who offered almost nothing became a big favorite in the game with a single conversation!  I feel like that encapsulates the difference between Shadow Dragon and New Mystery pretty well.

The last thing I’ll mention is gameplay.  I really enjoyed just playing this game, and I think a big component of that is because the maps are pretty short.  And yet.  They’re challenging.  There are a few that just repeatedly required me to restart the chapter, despite being maybe three turns long.  The extra chapter when you first face Legion, and it’s got the two mercenaries to the left and right of your starting position, and you can recruit both but you have to not kill them?  The map was so small they could get to just about anyone, so it was a real challenge to handle the archers with my high movement units, prevent those two from dying against the blockades to the sides, and take out the boss quickly without being swarmed.  Other times, the gimmicks were a little obnoxious.  Like Chapter 18.  You’re trying to take this one castle on the right that’s pretty well defended, but there are these super fast cav archers closing in on you from above.  You basically have one turn to get to the village on the left, so their king calls them off.  It’s a cool chapter, but I had to reset the first time, because I didn’t go into the chapter knowing that.  I put my dancer closer to the fortress, thinking I’d have to just move quickly and take out the boss to get them to back off, so Marth couldn’t reach the goal fast enough.  It’s just small things like that.

Overall, I think it’s pretty solid.  I could see playing this one again some day.  Maybe to intentionally miss one of the spheres so I can see what the bad ending is about.  But on the whole, I like it.  Still not super impressed with the characters in Marth’s game, I still feel like a lot are pretty bland (including Marth himself), but it’s a huge step up from Shadow Dragon.

[sakumosowainthirst]

I’m running on 4 hours of sleep and coffee; let’s make a controversial post! Today’s topic: Fates/Awakening ships I hate!  :D

Preface: I’m not hating on anyone who ships these.  I’m also not saying you can’t/shouldn’t ship these.  I’m merely voicing why I dislike them, because I usually keep it all to myself and just feel like screaming into the void today.  So all of this is just my opinion, and you don’t have to take it seriously, okay? C:  Also, I don’t want to have to type “to me” after every opinion, so just take it as implied.

Now then, let’s begin.

Lonliss/Lon’qu-Lissa

Easily my biggest dislike on the list.  I will never, ever, ever understand why this is Owain’s most popular parentage.  Their supports weren’t all that great, and they are just so different from each other in ways that I think they would just clash.  I’ve seen people who ship it say, “He would be so supportive of Owain’s banter!  He would encourage his playfulness!”  And all I can think is, “Are we thinking of the same Lon’qu?  The one who’s stoic, doesn’t talk much, is very serious and grumpy?  That Lon’qu?”  He’s the token tsundere, sure, but I really don’t see him accepting Owain; I actually see the opposite.  I feel like Lissa and Owain’s upbeat personalities would grate on his nerves, to the point he’d find them both unbearably embarrassing.  Lissa and Lon’qu also just have MUCH BETTER ships/supports with other characters, and tbh, they both deserve better.  Lissa and Owain deserve someone who gels with their sunshine energy, and Lon’qu deserves a more reserved partner.  Of all Owain’s dad ships, Lonliss is the only one I truly cannot, “see,” and no explanation has made me able to, “see,” it as they both are in canon, and probably never will, tbh.  Every other Lissa ship, I can find some sort of merit, even if I don’t ship it, but when I look at Lonliss, there is just none.  No chemistry, no commonality, no anything that makes them a good couple.  Not in canon, anyway.  I’ve heard a ton of headcanons for it (I’m an Owain stan and this is quite literally his most popular dad, it’s very common), and fanon is fine and dandy, but when it bends canon too much, it just doesn’t sit well with me, and Lon’qu being any sort of okay with Lissa and Owain just bends canon too much, to me.  They’re too hyper, he’s too reserved.  As a final thought, I’m admittedly not a fan of any ship that takes Lissa and Owain away from Ylisstol, and Lon’qu (along with Donnel) does.  Their ending states they live in Ferox, and I just don’t like that.  I like Owain growing up alongside Lucina.  Also, Cynthia and probably Morgan would be in Ylisstol, and Owain canon has the Justice Cabal with them in his youth, so that’s kind of contradictory if he’s born and raised in Ferox.  (I also personally headcanon both Lissa and Owain hating the cold, tbh.  Odin has a line about hating the cold in Anna’s DLC in Fates, and I think Lissa mentions hating snow at some point, too, though I could be wrong.)

Owainigo/Laslodin/Owain-Brady

Grouping these together because I’m equally meh on both.  I can definitely see them, but I don’t like them.  Owain and Inigo do become bros, but I kind of feel like they would still squabble like petty children like their Awakening supports.  It’s more in a brotherly way, though; they start off teasing each other and end up in a slap-hands fight.  I like them as a friendship, just not a romantic ship.

Owain/Brady I have more trouble seeing because their only commonality is their mothers, and their supports make them seem like casual friends at best.  I feel like their mothers is a big part of why they’re shipped, tbh, which is just kind of :T for me.  I can see them if I squint, but it’s not a ship I care for.

The saddest thing is, look up anything spicy for Owain, you’re going to find one of these two in it.  Either these two or...

Odiniles/Leodin/Leotrio Threesome

Oh boy, here we go, SakuMo disliking another popular pairing(s).  Odin and Niles canonically bicker.  Like, they are nasty to each other.  Odin says as much in their A rank.  He says they should try to get along more, but I’m not really sure how well that would turn out.  To be honest, the only thing they really have in common is their loyalty to Leo.  Lacking that, they’re two wildly different people.  I’m not saying that different people can’t work as a couple--it happens all the time--but if you lack at least some common ground, it makes it really hard for a relationship to work.  Devotion to your master isn’t really much common ground.  Given their canon history, dramatically different personalities, and lack of common interests, I just don’t see them being compatible.  Every Odiniles fic I’ve ever read had Niles uncharacteristically understanding of Odin, to the point it didn’t even feel like Niles at all/he was very OOC.  One again, fanon is fine--you do you!--but bending canon too much and/or in ways that don’t make sense to the character is just not my scene.

Leodin is one that I can kind of see, definitely more than Odiniles, which in no way works in my head, but I’m just not a fan of it, generally.  My dislike isn’t as strong as with Odiniles, but it’s still there.  And I’ll just say that I am not into poly, don’t like OT3s, threesomes, etc., so that should sum up my feelings on the Leotrio as an OT3.

Odilise, Lazura, Selbaki, a.k.a. “The Oedipus Complex Ships”

Don’t make the Trio marry their moms, fam.  Odilise is the most egregious one, tbh, because Elise is so much like Lissa and it’s so, so creepy to ship her with Odin.  Never mind that canon Elise is supposed to be like...14-15 (I reject this canon and substitute my own hc of 18, but I digress), and though we don’t know how long the Trio is in Nohr before the start of Fates, we can assume anywhere from six months to a year or two considering they are well-established as retainers, so Odin is probably in his early 20s, at youngest maybe 20-21.  (Granted, using the canon ages makes a lot of ships suspect, especially with the younger characters, but I digress.)  I get that Elise is a good stat mom for Ophelia and gives the “canon” hair, but the ship itself is just problematic on a lot of fronts.  She’s basically his mom, their supports are playful but it def feels brotherly-sisterly (granted most of Elise’s supports do) and throws in the romance literally out of left field in the S rank, and they just look kind of suspect together, fam.  I have unfortunately in my travels across the internet for Owain content seen Odin/Elise porn, and the fact it makes me uncomfortable in a, “this looks really illegal,” way speaks volumes.  And again, yes, I know the same would be true for other ships with Elise, and it’s why there are few I actually like with her.  But Odin/Elise just in particular bothers me because like Lonliss, I see it the most, and it’s made me irrationally bitter toward it.  This one and Lonliss are my two, “hair-trigger rage,” ships.  I see either, I get really annoyed.  I don’t voice this, mind--I keep on scrolling and ignore the content--but it does make me grumpy, lol.  They’re the two I can honestly say I hate instead of just saying I dislike.

Selbaki is a bit lesser, but it basically makes Severa her own grandma, don’t do that. xD  Severa already has a complex with trying to be perfect like her mom, so making her feel the same not only for her husband but also her daughter is just cruel to her.  Give Severa a break, y’all.

Lazura is the least similar, admittedly, but it’s still in the same vein.  Performer marrying a performer.  Of the three, I can tolerate it the most, but it’s still not great for me.

Corrin/Any sibling, including Azura

Look, I get it.  Corrin is, by technicality, not blood-related to any of them, with the exception of Azura, who is their blood-related cousin.  H O W E V E R, just because they find out that they aren’t blood-related to the Nohr siblings doesn’t mean the familial bonds just go POOF.  The Nohr siblings would definitely not be like, “I guess we can bang Corrin now.”  If this were the case, adopted families would never “truly” bond because they aren’t related by blood.  Corrin growing up in Nohr means that they would most likely always see the Nohr siblings as family, and vice-versa.

Hoshido, on the other hand, is a bit trickier.  While it’s true they aren’t blood-related, I want to say Ryoma is the only one who knows?  Like, I think he’s the only one who brings it up in the S Support?  But lacking that, Corrin and the rest of the Hoshido siblings do think they’re blood-related.  Hidden Truths states that Corrin never learned the truth about their real father, nor that Lilith is their sister.  All 3 routes play out with the assumption that Sumeragi was Corrin’s father, and if it’s stated otherwise, it’s maybe only in the beginning as a throwaway line during the Mikoto section.  You could make a plausible argument that the Trio could tell Corrin the truth, since all 3 of them have heart-rank lines where they reveal their real names and that they’re from another world, but that’s leading into possible canon rather than actual canon (and is also why I hc it).  But for all intents and purposes, Corrin thinks they are blood-siblings with the Hoshido fam, so that would make them less likely to pursue them romantically.  And even if they knew, they still all all each other brother/sister.

Azurrin is the trickiest.  It’s only in Revelation that the connection between Arete, Azura’s mother, and Mikoto, Corrin’s mother, is made, afaicr, so in Birthright and Conquest, Corrin technically wouldn’t know they are cousins.  However, Azura would.  Azura always knew everything, because her mother told her about Valla and taught her the traditional song and such.  She most likely knew Mikoto was her aunt.  Even on the off chance she didn’t know, it would still be an awkward down the line thing when they find out they’re cousins.  I know Japan is more lenient on the whole cousin-marriage thing, but...don’t have Shigure and Kana coming out looking like the Habsburgs, please, I beg you, lol.

My rule of thumb: if two characters refer to each other as, “brother,” or, “sister,” at any point, don’t let them fuck.  xD

Kana/Any Romantic/Sexual Ship

Kana is a child.  Stop it.  Stop it right now.  They are a baby.  I’VE SEEN FICS, I KNOW IT EXISTS, YOU SICK FUCKS.  Even aged up feels a little awkward, but I can be a little bit more lenient on that.  I just never will.  Kana is asexual and aromantic in my eyes, lol.

That’s all I can really think of right now; coffee is wearing off, I need a nap, lol.  Once again, please don’t be offended if I dislike a ship you like!  We are all different!  I just wanted to throw this out there on the off chance I do requests again and someone wants one of these written, because I would respectfully decline.  I don’t mean these to be hateful, just sort of venting into the ether in a mildly-exhausted stupor.

Also, you can try to counter me on some of these, but tbh, a few of them, I am stubbornly never going to change my mind, so we’d just go round and round in a circular argument if you tried.  xD  I like what I like and don’t like what I don’t, lol.  I’m not typically a multi-shipper, either, so you’d probably be hard-pressed to get me to shift at all, lol.  I mean that in the most loving way possible, too.

[irandrura]

What were your thoughts on Fire Emblem Echoes?

(EDIT: I thought the question was about FE14 and answered it for that. oops.)

Briefly:

Played Conquest, didn’t finish it because the plot was insultingly stupid. Also have Birthright, but never bothered. Didn’t buy Revelation, and indeed I think the existence of Revelation is scummy and anti-consumer.

The characters felt too broad, to me. They had a similar problem to FE13 in that they cleaved too closely to anime stereotypes, and in particular often felt rather too designed to satisfy fetishes. The incest angle only made that worse. I think it has a similar effect to FE13 where the same-sex supports are much better than the opposite-sex ones, because the same-sex ones are by definition non-romantic and thus not crowbarred into banal love stories. (I hear FE16 introduces more same-sex romance - I am pessimistic.)

I like a bunch of the mechanics of FE14; I thought the castle was a good evolution on FE13′s asynchrononous multiplayer, and a lot of the missions I played were very good turn-based strategy.

But ultimately I never finished FE14. The characters did not appeal to me, and the story and worldbuilding were just... aggressively bad.

For me, FE15 was a wonderful return to form, being a remake, and I loved it. But I fear that FE16 is produced/written in the same tradition as FE13 and 14, and that makes me extraordinarily cautious.

[gascon-en-exil]

I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: Revelation Part 3

Prologue

Opening Chapters

Revelation Part 1

Revelation Part 2

Chapters 20-Endgame, in which the Fire Emblem is a chainsaw.

Chapter 20 + 21

I bet this scene looks wonderfully silly if Takumi is promoted to kinshi knight.

I’m going to be combining many of the chapters in this post, because even though they take a while to play through there’s not much to them in terms of story. Of course Anthony is evil and Corrin has to kill him, although not before Anankos turns him into a Faceless (or was he one all along?). I think I would have preferred the humor of fighting him as a village with ludicrous stats over the sympathy grab they go for with him. It’s also worth pointing out that it’s the three older Nohrians who call out Corrin for trusting Anthony first, putting some of that healthy distrust they show off in Conquest to work again. I don’t like that we’re apparently meant to find Corrin’s endlessly trusting nature endearing because it’s what brought this group together and not, you know, self-insert narrative privilege, but whatever. None of FE14′s routes could go forward at certain points if Corrin didn’t occasionally grab the idiot ball, and at least this time they had the foresight to come up with a backup plan.

And I am actually glad that they did so with Anthony, because while Chapter 20 is more standard Valla fare the trap they fall into in 21 comes with a clever premise that’s fun to play around. I dislike how the chapters continue to be loaded down with entirely too many drops and chests as I mentioned last time, but I find that as long as you plot out routes for your units before you start the size of these maps isn’t a problem. 

One final question, since I didn’t bring it up in Birthright: why is the S rank naginata, which is obtained in Chapter 20 in Revelation, called a Waterwheel? Just...why? I have never found an explanation for this.

Chapter 22 + 23

Well of course she has, just look at those growths.

I find Arete intriguing as a character, though not so much either version that appears on screen - the brainwashed servant of Anankos or the sentimental dying mother - but rather the idea of her as she existed against the backdrop of the volatile Nohrian court. That element of her has to pieced together from inferences and bits of information in supports, but it’s clearly there. I fully understand why Revelation includes characters like Arete and Anthony. They have to convey over only a few chapters the nature of Anankos’s rule over Valla and its dominated subjects as well as make for credible threats to Corrin as they trek through the kingdom. This is the main reason why Arete’s real characterization is, much like Garon’s, extremely minimal, because the pain it inflicts on Azura is meant to demonstrate how Anankos operates. It’s a natural lead-in to the antagonists inside Gyges, certainly.

Kind of a shame though that the most lasting impression Arete leaves on the player is that of a boss who just will not give up, seeing as you have to fight her three times. I can’t think of another antagonist in the series who’s fought so often over such a short span of chapters. What’s worse, neither of these maps is very engaging; the first borrows the forest-burning Dragon Veins from Midori’s paralogue without the gimmick of chasing down the boss, while the second demonstrates something everyone already knew, that turn-based platforming is not fun. Scarlet’s return as an enemy leaves no impact unless Corrin or Ryoma fights her, so that’s not working too well either.

Chapter 24 + 25

Chapter 24’s gimmick may not be original, but an optional stealth mission works substantially better here than it does in Path of Radiance’s earlygame since Revelation is already well-established at this point as being one long experiment with gimmicks. I also like how the door mechanic plays into Corrin’s desire to trust Mikoto - and that the last door rewards players willing to go against the desperately trusting personality of their self-insert. Plus, it’s not a complete cheat; one of the first things Mikoto tells Corrin in the chapter is the blue doors are the correct ones, so her contradiction at the ends rings false even on the level of a simple puzzle. For what it’s worth mentioning I never bother with the stealth option here just as I don’t in FE9, because it’s tedious and requires a very specific setup and execution for a reward that’s not really worth it.

I find Mikoto difficult to engage with on an emotional level however, for much the same reason that her death didn’t resonate very strongly with me. It helps this time that all of the Hoshidan royals verbally react to seeing her again, but for Corrin this feels like a less substantial meeting than Azura’s reunion with Arete. Azura and the Hoshidans have memories of these women and the positive influence they played in their lives, whereas Corrin has, what, a few days’ worth of interactions with their mother and some very hazy memories from before their capture? I do like how Mikoto reveals at the end that Corrin is Vallite royalty, not because it adds even more to the super special Avatar status or because it establishes that Corrin and Azura are cousins (surprise sort-of incest, yay!) but because it re-contextualizes their place in the world both connected to and apart from the other royal families. It does absolutely do those two other things and is rather awkward on that basis, of course, but Vallite Corirn is able to comfortably exist in between their two families while still having a place to call their own. A ruined, empty place, but that’s for the epilogue.

At first I was planning on doing Chapter 25 as a separate entry, but then I played through it and realized that it’s just more moving platforms and hard enemies with another family reunion boss that’s nowhere near as emotionally affecting as the previous two. We see nothing of Sumeragi prior to this chapter aside from his brief death scene flashback, and unlike Arete his role as a parental figure overlaps significantly with someone else’s. I don’t get a strong sense of how important this reunion is to anyone except maybe Ryoma, and half of that comes from remembering their one-on-one back in Chapter 5. Come to think of it, the disguised Sumeragi has that quick cameo on the Birthright ship map, right? I suppose that’s technically the only appearance of anything from Valla on that route, although in retrospect it’s even more random for him to have shown up there. So, yeah, harder chapter, but can’t really compare to what came just before as a story moment.

Chapter 26

Betrayed by a Jagen! Who’d have thought we’d ever see the day...unless you consider Orson in FE8 a Jagen, that is.

As big twists in FE go Gunter’s doesn’t quite measure up to some others, like the Belhalla barbecue or Nasir in FE9, but it took me some thinking to properly parse out why this isn’t as effective a climactic reveal despite adequate use of foreshadowing and setting. It actually ties into one of the overall problems I have with Revelation and another time it compares unfavorably to Radiant Dawn (and I’m sorry to keep bringing it up if you hate FE10 or haven’t played it, but the parallels really are apt). One of the biggest genuine criticisms of that game’s plot, particularly near the end, is that the story gets too big for itself and spends all of its final chapters throwing at the player numerous major reveals about the plot and setting, many of them not directly related to each other and only immediately involving some dozen or so of a cast of playable and/or named characters about ten times that size. Like Revelation the pacing is utterly frantic, and moreover it gives the player the impression that in order to understand the Tellius setting as a whole and what themes the developers of that duology were aiming for you have to be intimately familiar with the content of Radiant Dawn’s endgame specifically, which...yeah, you kind of do. How that could have been better handled would be a subject for another post, but suffice it to say that the apparent conclusion that Sephiran did every bad thing (except racism) ever in Tellius as a means of tying everything together rings hollow even in-universe. 

The narrative approach of the Valla chapters is similar, but most of its big moments are clearly aiming to be character-driven, fueled by the relationships between the royals and their loved ones forced into fighting them. As I brought up earlier in this post however not many of those moments land because of another major problem Revelation shares with Radiant Dawn, that there’s been almost no time to develop any of those relationships with the plot moving at such a speed. You’d have to have seen Gunter’s supports - which aren’t even accessible on this route - to be able to appreciate at all his history with Corrin, since from the story text of Revelation and Conquest too for that matter there’s little to suggest anything beyond a straightforward master-servant relationship until the very moment when Corrin is pleading with Gunter to resist Anankos’s possession. Without that context the most relatable emotional moment of this chapter comes from Ryoma’s anger at learning the identity of Scarlet’s murderer, which we’re clearly not meant to dwell on much because that might imply Ryoma is capable of holding a grudge. It doesn’t help either that Gunter’s genuine hatred of Garon gets muddied by the Anankos possession angle, something that didn’t come into play until years after he began grooming Corrin as an instrument of his revenge. At least Takumi didn’t go off the deep end until after being possessed.

As for the chapter...ugh, I’m just so tired of this route. Mikoto’s ward actively discourages you from splitting up your forces to go after the absurd number of chests that line this map, and this late in the game there’s almost no reason not to just rush Gunter. Funny that’s he’s pretty underwhelming for an endgame boss - that’s a Jagen for you.

Chapter 27 + Endgame

A question I’ve never seen anyone else ask before: why is Anankos wearing a Buddha mask anyway? It’s apparently just a wall fixture in the castle that he’s hiding behind, and while I get that they wanted to conceal his true size and cosmic horror features for Endgame in the fashion of JRPG bosses with multiple phases the mask is entirely unexplained. Is it meant to be ironic that a dragon styling himself as a god is wearing the face of the major figure of a religion/philosophy with no deities?

I will say that the mechanics of the final battle match the concept of Revelation perfectly. You’re strongly encouraged to split up your forces into three groups to attack all of Anankos’s weak points quickly, which matches up well with the route’s theme of Corrin (and Azura) + Hoshido + Nohr. It’s also not one of those final bosses that’s easier than what came immediately before, so additional kudos for that. Also, Garon’s death on this route is mercifully swift, ripe for even more trauma for the Nohrian royals that no one’s got any time to dwell on.

Aside from those remarks...bleh. The story may conclude faster thanks to lacking the near-death sequences of Birthright and Conquest, but that pace just pushes forward to the very end with Corrin being crowned ruler of a kingdom with no people...except Hoshido and Nohr both cede territory to Valla so that they can have some citizens, because that’s reasonable and won’t cause any confusion or hard feelings. I even took the trouble to S rank Azura, believing incorrectly that it would in some way be reflected in the ending as the only instance of supports in Fates affecting the main plot. Nope, Azura still rejects the rule of Valla and passes it off to her husband as if nothing were different. Then everyone hugs and it’s a little bit gay and the series main theme plays and oh God I’m just glad this route is over. But hey, a chainsaw Fire Emblem is bizarrely badass if you’re into that kind of thing.

PS: Chapter 10 is still The Worst.

Next time: ending and final thoughts on Revelation

[nanigma]

hello i saw your recent post that said that ryoma has neglected takumi and sakura, and i definitely got that vibe but i was wondering when there are implicit mentions of that in-game. no shade at all intended, just curious,, have a good day!

Not really mentions per se, as I believe this part of Ryouma was not intentional of the writers. At least not when looking at how much Warriors and other spin-offs portray him as the perfect big bro.

(Warning: very long)

Mind you, I think he’s obliviously negligent and not maliciously so.

It’s still a vibe that is gotten when looking at how he acts in relation to his two youngest siblings across all three paths. There’s at least one incident in each of them where it just seems that Takumi and Sakura just… aren’t that high on his priority list:

Birthright: It’s stated that both he and Takumi fought together against the Nohrian army at the Bottomless Canyon. From how it’s described, it sounds like they lost sight of each other before there was a massive landslide that ended with Takumi dropping into the canyon and getting possessed. Now, let’s accept that Ryouma didn’t actually witness Takumi falling.. shouldn’t he still have been, idk, worried? They just lost a dangerous battle and he has no idea what happened to his youngest brother. But he doesn’t try checking up him.

Even if he thinks Cheve is too important for him to ignore, you would think he’d also send Kagero to find out what happened to Takumi? Be relieved when he sees him again? Anything? No, the plot just forgets it ever happened, which makes it seem like Ryouma also forgot his brother was with him in battle (or at least didn’t consider looking for him a priority. He’s fiiine, you’ll see… Right, totally fine.)

In chapter 16, when Takumi falls ill, it’s Sakura who rushed to his side and frantically tries to help him. Ryouma on the other hand, only enters the conversation a bit later and doesn’t come across as especially worried. (Hinoka is entirely absent from this chapter).

Conquest: Now this is trickier because it happens in an emotionally charged scene. When Ryouma is confronted for the final time in Shirasagi, he gets to hear the fate of all of his other siblings. Sakura is a prisoner of Nohr, Takumi is MIA, and considering how high the Wall of Susanoo is, pretty surely dead (Corrin only tells him they didn’t find a body later). He manages to take all this in without much of a reaction, and only flips out when he hears Corrin supposedly killed Hinoka.

Now this could be a case of the straw that broke the camel’s back, but… All he does is rage over Corrin killing Hinoka. While understandable, since it’s the only death he “knows” they are directly responsible for, he never mentions what happened to Takumi or Sakura. Heck, before Corrin specifies anything to him, he still only mentions wanting to be sent to Hinoka. This is writing from hindsight. The writer’s know Takumi is still around in some capacity, but Ryouma shouldn’t..  At least not before Corrin says they checked and didn‘t find a body. And, you know, a little word of concern about Sakura might have been appreciated..

It just really comes across that, even in his final moments, he has other priorities.

Revelations: Ah, the grand brawl between Nohr, Hoshido and Corrin’s forces in the Opera city. Such an emotionally tense scene as sibling clashes with sibling. Marx steels himself for fighting Camilla. Ryouma has a heartfelt confrontation with… his retainers. He has no conversation with his baby sibs, treating them like common enemies. I assume deadlines or oversight on this one, but it just feels so jarring.. Sure, he gets a line after the battle, asking them to promise they won’t get themselves killed. But with the way the scene is structured it almost feels like an afterthought. 

Overall it’s just all these incidents combined that just leave you with the impression that he doesn’t think much about Takumi and Sakura. If the intention is that Ryouma cares for all of his siblings equally, the writers really didn’t succeed at conveying it.

Then there are the supports:

Now the supports show he cares for his siblings a lot better than the story, still there’s something about them that bothers me.

In Ryouma’s support with Takumi, it’s obvious he knows about his younger brother’s feelings of inferiority. To help him, he finally offers him a place in Hoshido’s government, which helps Takumi’s self worth a ton by showing him that he’s valued in more ways than just one. Sadly, Ryouma never goes the whole way here and says what his brother really needs to hear. “Your family loves you just as you are.”. It’s a contrast to his supports with his sisters, where Ryouma actually does show them emotional affection. I guess it might be because Takumi is male… ?

Now his support with Sakura is just entirely sweet and there’s nothing big to criticize, except, well, why didn’t he tell her the story of her name before? Mikoto doesn’t seem to have been around for it, so he was the only one who could have told her. Sakura also acts more formal to him (in contrast to her immediately confiding in Takumi during their support), and doesn’t seem to be really at ease until the B-support. 

On that note, Takumi and Sakura’s issues with self-worth couldn’t have come from nowhere. Mikoto was a loving mother, but she’s only one woman, with the duties of a queen no less. Hinoka is explicitly stated to have been completely wrapped up in her training and Ryouma.. well he’s the crown prince. He had a lot of things to take care of too. He’s close with Hinoka, because of a similar age and he likely formed a bond with her before things went pear-shaped with Nohr, which gave him more pressure. Takumi and Sakura were likely very very young at that point, so he was more distant from them growing up.

It especially shows in Takumi’s competitveness. If we take the Drama CD as canon (since it doesn’t contradict anything), the neglect also explains how extreme some of his reactions to Corrin are. I mean he gets incredibly jealous when Ryouma gives their brother a pat on the head… If Ryouma gave Takumi those regularly, I don’t think he’d be that upset. Sorry, Takumi. Looks like your annual headpat just got cancelled…

Takumi thirsting for his older siblings’ affection and attention is canon. He wouldn’t need to do that if Ryouma (and Hinoka) actually gave him any of that.

[heiwanoryu-archive]

RULES:  List five tropes applicable to your character, then tag others to do the same.(Tropes Wiki)  REPOST! DO NOT REBLOG.

Tagged by: No one; a friend linked it to me. Tagging:  YOU.

Badass Bookworm: The Avatar isn't on Robin's level of intelligence or tactical ingenuity, but they do read in their spare time, and while naïve, are far from stupid. By the end of each game, the Avatar will have bested in combat great generals, dangerous criminals, royalty, hulking monsters, shape shifters, reanimated soldiers, seasoned veterans, and depending on the route Garon's dragon form ("Birthright"), a slime monster, an empowered Takumi ("Conquest") and finally their true father, a dragon-god-king ("Revelation").

Badass Princess: The Female Avatar, as she's a part of the Nohrian royalty (and even though she was adopted from Hoshido, she was of royalty there too) and is far from helpless. Also, her initial class is called Nohr Princess.

Blade on a Stick: While the Avatar can't use lances by default without re-classing, it's revealed in the female Avatar's support with Shiro that she's skilled enough with a lance to give him a run for his money. Considering everything the Avatar knows about fighting comes from Xander, a Paladin, it's not surprising.

Blithe Spirit: The Avatar doesn't particularly care if others perceive them as weird when they help out—and thanks to their optimism and social ignorance, they often do come across as such. It's especially notable in Revelation, where they shock everyone by choosing neither side to make their own.

Bond Villain Stupidity: Invoked late in Conquest when they have Ryoma at their mercy. The Avatar tells Garon they should spare him to extend his suffering, although the real reason is because they actually don't want to kill him.

Character Development: All routes give the Avatar different development due to the circumstances in question. To wit:

In Birthright, they grow more and more furious over the atrocities committed by Nohr, but at the same time, becomes all the more resolute in their idealistic beliefs. By the end of the route, they still remain firmly believing in their idealism, but they're much stronger mentally from where they started.

In Conquest, they join Nohr with the noble - if somewhat naive - intention of changing Nohr from within, believing that the war can end quickly if they change Garon for the better. Sadly, it doesn't work out, and the Avatar soon realizes that the only way to save the continent from ruination while changing Nohr from the inside would be to go along with the plan to invade Hoshido. By the time the route reaches its climax, they go from a Wide-Eyed Idealist into somebody who reluctantly cast aside their own ideals in order to change the world for the better. It's to the point that when confronted by a possessed Takumi, the Avatar doesn't even bother to justify their actions and instead accepts Takumi's rage without a second thought.

In Revelation, they get a mix of their Birthright and Conquest development. They are no longer naïve to the happenings of the world and become confident in themselves, but are still kindhearted and optimistic to a fault.

Cultured Badass: The male Avatar isn't just a skilled warrior. He can play the piano, likes poetry, is well-versed in philosophy, and is even said to learn how to sing if he marries Azura. [ I apply this trope to the Female Avatar as well ]

Deadpan Snarker:  The Avatar dishes out their fair share of snark throughout the story.

Azura: Avatar! We have trouble! Nohrian forces are approaching! Avatar: Seriously? We haven't even been here five minutes...

Girly Bruiser: The Female Avatar comes across as this. She's as battle-hardened as her male counterpart, but her female-specific support with characters like Caeldori show that she enjoys girly things like romance novels.

Good Is Not Dumb: As nice and naïve as they are, the Avatar is not stupid. They clearly don't buy Garon's claims that he wasn't trying to kill them with the exploding sword on Conquest, and on Birthright they'll actually list the event as one of the reasons for their defection. In Revelation, they aren't fooled by Anthony's deception, pretend to go along with it and effectively out-gambit him, and later correctly deduce Scarlet's killer based off something only they would know.

Good Is Not Soft: They're no pushover, either. Before the route split, they stand their ground against Garon and, with their dragon powers, intimidate Hans into talking about his assassination attempt, and afterwards they prove they're willing to resort to threats if it can get the job done — even on the lighter route, Birthright.

Hurting Hero: During Conquest, the Avatar's supports with Azura reveal them to be this. To elaborate, they have recurring nightmares over the Hoshidans that have died as a result of their choice, and is having a crisis of morality over just how far the ends justify the means, even believing that they're going to Hell for what they've done. This doesn't stop them from pressing on, however.

Informed Deformity: If Peri is in the Hot Springs with a Female Avatar, she will comment that the latter's body is covered in scars - enough to make her giddy - though this isn't reflected by her character model. Of course, it's possible that they've just faded too much to see outside of very close inspection.

Innocently Insensitive: The Avatar was raised away from the world, and while kind-hearted, occasionally makes a comment or question that seems normal to them, but insults the other person.

Lethal Chef: Per the series' tradition with its Player Characters, the Avatar can't cook at all. They manage to burn tea in their supports with Jakob, and are implied to produce food that tastes like steel (they were taught to cook by Gunter, who can't cook either). This trait is a bit inconsistent with the female Avatar, who reveals herself to be a fairly skilled baker in her Support conversations with Dwyer.

Living Emotional Crutch: It's strongly implied that they are this for several characters.

Nice Guy:

Caeldori: You always put the needs of others before your own. Even when dangerous, you choose mercy, compassion, and kindness over all else.

No Social Skills: The Avatar is a fairly forward individual who sees nothing wrong with behavior others would label "unconventional", such as shouting in a public area. This can be chalked up to their reclusive childhood not giving them the chance to develop normal social skills. Despite this, they still manage to get along with people well enough.

Oblivious to Love: The male Avatar has around half a dozen ladies that can potentially be crushing on him, but he never notices until they flat-out tell him. Camilla and Rhajat drop some very obvious hints about being into him, Hinoka and Felicia have liked him for some time, and Sakura and Azura are implied to fall for him after meeting him for the first time. His failure to notice is Justified given his isolated upbringing and lack of real social interaction.  [ I apply this trope to the Female Avatar as well ]

The Pollyanna: Rain or shine, the Avatar is a perpetual optimist and is rarely in a bad mood. This trait endures throughout Birthright and Revelation (though in the latter, it gets somewhat tempered, due to the dire situation at hand since Anankos was seeking to destroy humanity), but gets utterly crushed in Conquest.

Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Azura's Blue. The Avatar isn't exactly hot-headed, but they do tend to make decisions based off their hearts instead of their heads, as well as being openly emotive.

Royalty Superpower: As a descendant of the First Dragons, and in fact the direct child of Anankos, they are able to use Dragon Vein, which will be inherited by any child they become a parent of.

Shared Family Quirks: Orochi states in her support with Ryoma that Mikoto was very fond of sweets just like the Avatar. The Avatar also inherits Anankos's apologetic attitude. Several characters such as Fuga note how the Avatar has the same personalty as their adopted father Sumeragi.

She-Fu: This normally-female trope actually applies to both genders. The Avatar might be the most acrobatic lord in the series; their fighting style incorporates many flips, graceful spins, jumping sword strikes, and rolls.

Skilled, but Naïve: The Avatar is well-known to be naïve despite their skill, as Rinkah and several others refer to them as "that sheltered Nohrian prince(ss)".

Spock Speak: The Female Avatar speaks formally at all times.

Strategy Versus Tactics: Unlike Robin, the Avatar is good with the latter but not the former. While their charisma makes them an excellent leader in skirmishes and the Male Avatar's support with Shiro show he's good at discerning an immediate opponent's strengths and weaknesses, both genders lack the vision to handle large-scale battles. Their supports with Leo in particular showcases this difference, with the Avatar being upset at their inability to command large forces and Leo upset as his inability to command small ones.

Survivor's Guilt: Never outright stated, but it's implied they suffer from this, due to Sumeragi and Mikoto dying to protect them. Their supports with characters like Kaze and Yukimura have them apologizing for surviving Garon's ambush when Sumeragi did not—something they had no control over—they often express doubt over their own worthiness, and they downright panic if they're ever forced to leave allies behind. Depending on the route, they may have to watch even more of their loved ones sacrifice themselves for them, and express a great deal of anguish over that as well.

Sweet Tooth: Several of their supports include them handing candy to the other person, implying they love sweets and keep some on them at all times. Jakob also mentions making some for them in his supports with Effie.

Trying Not to Cry: In late Conquest, when Ryoma kills himself in front of them, they hit a point where they need to walk away and verbally remind themselves that crying now would ruin their facade as Garon's obedient, cold hearted child. It doesn't work, and they shed several chapters' worth of Tears of Remorse.

Unstoppable Rage:It doesn't happen often, but when the Avatar gets pissed, they get pissed. Their mindless, grief-driven rampage in Chapter 5 is perhaps the best example of this, followed up by their Paralogue with their child Kana after seeing them attacked.

In Conquest, when Iago tells the Avatar about all the things he has done under the king's orders to ruin their life in their pre-fight conversation in Ch 26, the Avatar straight up says they will kill him.

Warrior Therapist: The Avatar is always willing to lend an ear to the troubles of their comrades, and will do whatever they can to help.

Weak, but Skilled: While the Avatar is no slouch in battle, and is arguably one of the best fighters in the army, they are far from the strongest, finding themselves bested by more powerful opponents like King Garon, Xander on Birthright or Anankos in Revelation in straight-up single combat. Rather, their greatest strengths are their intelligence and analytical ability; their charisma; their determination; the Yato; and their bonds with the many people that are or grow loyal to them, especially the royal siblings. Their fighting style seems to reflect this trope as well—lots of flips, spins and twists that lack power, but are very fast and hard to dodge.

Wide-Eyed Idealist: The Avatar has a rather hopeful, idealistic view of the world. Depending on what route is chosen, it may or may not be broken by what happens next.

Xander: Mark my words, Avatar... One day an act of kindness may be the death of you. Avatar: Perhaps, but if I'm kind, I will die without regrets.

[mirika]

Now it's my turn mwehehehe: Laslow, Niles, Camilla, Sakura and Leo?

The only downside to some of these is that you had already told me so much about them, that I could not create a true first impression.

This took ages.

First impression:

Laslow: I did not notice his existence at all in Birthright to be fair. I might have even killed him off while he is one of the four deaths that you can spare (sometimes this haunts me). When I started playing Conquest, I had the words of my former classmate in my head (”you’re going to like Laslow probably” and me thinking “you don’t know my taste in men!” and well here we are), so my first impression got blended in with a feeling of “well I do seem to be rather fond of this one” but it was merely attachment at that point.

Niles: I already knew he was a pervert cause of you, and honestly that was something that just ended up being confirmed. I couldn’t shape my own first impression.

Camilla: I’m going to have to dig in my memory, but I had not much of an opinion of her other than “okay she is behaving a little creepy towards Corrin” and it doesn’t help I played male Corrin most of the time.

Sakura: I was annoyed with her stuttering because I thought Fire Emblem pulled a “shy girl that stutters” anime trope. I know better now, but that was my first impression.

Leo: Of him too I could not form a true first impression, sadly.

Impression now:

Laslow: In the end my former classmate was right and I ended up liking the guy. Uh. A little too much, perhaps. I will always wonder how my former classmate knew as he is nothing like the other fictional character he knows I’m into. Xander may give him a lot of shit for flirting, but knowing his background as to why he flirts so much with other women, and especially with his attitude of “you never know when you see someone for the last time,” he’s simply a precious human being trying to get to know his fellow people. Over a cup of tea, if possible.

Niles: He’s still a perv, but he’s also hilarious. Not an Odin-kind of hilarious, but hilarious nonetheless. Also, he does the random meow thing like me, so I send love to this guy. Not too much love though, don’t want to give him wrong ideas.

Camilla: Strong fierce woman, do not mess with her! I still find her a bit creepy when you play male Corrin though. I don’t feel like they translated that very well. I am rather fond of her though.

Sakura: Protect her! PROTECT HER! I became rather fond of Sakura. She’s adorable.

Leo: Well… he’s… he’s a grumpy book nerd, what can I say? I did not name him Ugh Boy for nothing. I actually don’t have a strong impression of Leo, I feel like he fell a bit into the background for me.

Favourite moment:

Laslow: Gee. A favourite moment. It’s a bit rough with non-royals as light isn’t shone upon them as much (is shone proper English?). I mean, obviously I like any interaction of his with Corrin, especially when he gets serious for a moment, but uh… I cannot think of any moment other than specific supports, like the support between Laslow and Mozu.

Niles: Remember when Niles said meow? Good times. No, I actually really enjoyed the Felicia and Niles support (mostly C and B when Niles is messing around). I just love Felicia’s obliviousness towards Niles’ innuendos.

Camilla: Her fight over Corrin with Jakob, whenever Camilla threatens others showing that you can’t mess with her, her support with Elise where she tells Elise need not be like her.

Sakura: I can currently only think of her support with Kaden and Elise.

Leo: Honestly his cut scene is pretty darn cool.

Idea for a story:

Laslow: Honestly, I’m going to fall back on a headcanon post I once made. Laslow being drunk allowing Odin to mess with him as payback from the times Laslow has been reading Odin’s book as I believe Laslow would be the kind of guy to spill the beans on whatever when he’s drunk.

Niles: Niles and his daughter Nina being thieving outlaws, but for the greater good like Robin Hood, helping the poor and all that.

Camilla: I would love to see a story in which Camilla would have to be in a more realistic medieval situation where she has to be ladylike in a clean and virtuous way, especially as a royal, even though we all know that’s not who she is. Of course this story would lead to her desire to protect her family as a warrior of sorts.

Sakura: A story in (short) movie format of Elise and her having a tea party with stuffed animals would be adorable even though they are likely to be too old for that. Let the princesses be their younger selves.

Leo: Can we have a story in which Leo falls hopelessly in love with a book character? A quest to somehow turn this fictional character into something real. I’m sure Odin’s got some supportive ideas.

Unpopular opinion:

Laslow: Oh boy. Well, I hate Xanlow and I dislike Peri and Laslow as well, but these appear to be two of the biggest ships. I actually like Elise and Laslow, I feel that this isn’t very popular, but maybe that’s because of Elise’s age; I headcanon their relationship as innocent and pure so I guess it’s just the point of view I have. Also, I hate the very idea of Laslow in female dancer clothes because I hate how Laslow is always turned into ‘the feminine one’ in whatever gay ship they like to imagine as if gay relationships consist of ‘the masculine one’ and ‘the feminine one’, just let the characters be who they are without ‘straightening’ gay relationships. Sorry, we hit the pet peeve area as that is something that bothers me in general.

Niles: I do not think there are any unpopular opinions to be created about Niles. I think everyone loves Niles. I do am pooped he’s the only character you can have a gay relationship with, but I think everyone agrees with that.

Camilla: I don’t mind her oversexualized clothing like you said in your answer too, especially because her gear is still convincing of that it is heavy armour that is capable of protecting her. Besides, boobs are a weapon too. Do not underestimate medieval times and the ability to distract men with boobs in combat. Do not underestimate boobs. In all honesty though, I really do not mind armour showing skin so long it still looks like the armour is protecting them. That’s character design for ya. Of course it’s a typical anime trope and therefore many dislike it, but it works for Camilla.

Sakura: I do not know the opinions about Sakura cause the only person I follow reblogs Nohrians and not so much Birthright (looking at you evangeline). I cannot imagine anything I could disagree with.

Leo: The Leo and Takumi ship is something I don’t really understand, but then again, I am not far enough into Revelations yet.

Favourite relationship:

Laslow: Corrin, but only my Corrin. This one’s rough. I paired him with with Elise and Azura as I liked these combinations when I play the male avatar, but I haven’t tried all things out yet (but reading into Laslow and Effie I like that Effie allows him to still chat up with women so that gets my stamp of approval as well).

Niles: I have a sincere adoration towards Niles and Felicia, I can’t help it.

Camilla: I like that putting her and Jakob together is basically a contest as to who loves Corrin more.

Sakura: Kaden!!! Sakura and Kaden are terribly adorable together! They take naps together and stuff. 

Leo: I like to pair up Leo with Azura, because you forget that Leo’s a grumpy kid as he seems to enjoy Azura’s singing so much.

I just wanted to add that I am not too much of a shipper to be that invested in this section of the ask, and I simply don’t feel that strong about every character and I do not know many supports by heart.

Favourite headcanon:

Laslow: After the war, Laslow found that it is time to put down his sword and invests his time into what he truly loves: dancing and making people smile. He would still low-key keep himself fit for combat by implementing his skill with the sword in some of his dancing rituals in case any new war would break out or if his partner were to come to danger, but the last thing he would want for is his partner to worry for his life as he would do the same for them if they were to be sent into battle.

Niles: Despite the sadist that he is, he reveals to have a weak spot to those who seem ever so oblivious to his behaviour. He feels the need to protect these people at all costs while continuing to behave the way he is with others. No one knows this softer side of him, however, until they get close to him.

Camilla: For some reason I like to think that Camilla ends up as a cat lady, always surrounded by furry friends. And uh, don’t mess with her cats either.

Sakura: She becomes best friends with Elise. Together they would always visit peasants and offer them food and flowers whilst keeping the children entertained with toys. They are to be known the kindest princesses of their current age as they are absolutely selfless in all they do. Even whilst growing into adulthood and marrying off other men, their friendship never lost its strength.

Leo: I like to think Leo is aromantic. His love for knowledge and magic is greater than for other humans, other than the platonic love he carries for his friends and family. This is why he remains an unmarried prince and this has always worked out as Xander’s son Siegbert is to take over the throne when Xander passes. If for some reason he must marry, he would find political reasons for this much more than to marry for love.

These headcanons are not necessarily favourites, I was already happy I could come up with some whilst avoiding any headcanons that involve specific ships. Some characters already have such a strong canon that I find it hard to headcanon around it as well.

[shadowlink720]

FE: Birthright Randomised Prologue, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2

(aka ‘I can’t believe Shadow is freaking Dead’)

ok Are you ready for this? I’m sure not but let’s mcfreaking go I’m gonna go on a lot of tangents probably so please forgive me for that---

oooooooook so let’s see if this actually works (I haven’t actually tested it yet, but it loaded instead of hanging at a black screen so I’m assuming it does), let’s also see if it breaks the game or not b/c I’ve heard that Birthright can so therefore Conquest is more reliable but I never want to play Conquest ever again holy heck I don’t have a physical copy of Conquest ayyyy

But enough stalling! Let’s get right to it! Ah jeez I really want to give Corrin the really short hair I did when I branched off to Revelation but I want to keep the SYMBOLISM-

.... a lot of these pictures are gonna be squint ahah (also it’s Samurai b/c I need Astra lmao)

ok then let’s goooooo

I suppose I should be worried that the ‘No’ option doesn’t show properly but w/e (the button is blank lol)

........ Azura could you build the suspence any higher ahahahah;;;;;;

OH MY GOD IT WORKED

TAKUMI REPLACED HINOKA I’M GOING TO D I E And he’s a Diviner lmao no Fujin Yumi for u m8 I hope that the Ryoma and Takumi replacements can/will use Raijinto and Fujin Yumi lol ohhh my farore I am actually shaking aaaaahhh give me a minute ahahh--- this is so surreal is this actually happening I don’t even kno w ANYWAY

Takumi are you saying ‘How dare you!?’ to the Nohrian for trying to attack me or me for not knowing how to dodge-

also I’m going to skip enemy/ally phases so there aren’t any spoilers >:3c

ok I know it’s for stability’s sake, but Takumi with the Sky Knight class looks like he has short hair-

OH MY GOFD

woops I could have taken a better one uagiuagdfudgh RYOMA IS REPLACED WITH AZURA I’M DYI N G IT’S WORSE THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THE ROOM NEXT TO ME WHO CAN PROBABLY HEAR MY LAUGHING THO HECK

ah yeah since it’s Birthright then the Nohrian siblings won’t get randomised for stability :V

wait Felici a is tAKUMI FELICIA IS TAKUMI WE DON’T NEED TO PLAY IT ANY FURTHER THIS IS THE PINNACLE HOLY HYLIA

ohhh my gosh Sakura is replaced with Mozu aaaaaahhhhh that’s adorable auhfiughdfysdgf

OH YM GOD

Ryoma is Yukimura I’m This playthrough is going to end me tbh---

I don’t think I’m ever going to get over Felicia being Takumi and Azura being Ryoma tbh holy heck

also I really hope Felicia turns out to be a class that can use bows so that she could possibly have Fujin Yumi idk how it works tho ahahahhhh;;;;;;

I’m not getting over this, I can’t wait to see more of Felicia being passive aggressive/throwing the extreme SALT around

Azura, Takumi just asked if u were alright, I don’t really think humming is gonna help u with answering him-

Azura, High Princess of NoChill-shido

aaaand more vanilla sibliings (I’m sorry, I didn’t have the courage to try to get Revelation to work-)

It’s at times like this when you realise just how different Hinoka and Takumi are when it comes to acting towards u at the start asfhiudfsiudh

WELP ANYWAY that concludes the Proloooogue, time to get right into Chapter 1 aaaaaah

also this is what I was talking about with the button being blank ahahahh;;;;

time to see Felicia and Jakob’s replacements ayyyy OH MY GOD

Felicia is now an Oni Savage Hana holy heck- JAKOB IS KAZE I’M GOING TO DI E

OH MY GOD Flora asked Hana if she’d help w/ waking Corrin up and Hana’s voiceline was just ‘No’ aioasdfudfhsudfs I think I’m going to do Chapter 2 as well seeing as basically nothing will be different this chapter b/c I ain’t doing Conquest ahahah;;;

I always seem to forget how tutorial heavy fe games are, but especially in Fates :’’’’D ayyyy first level up! ..... I only got hp! :’’’’’’’’D yikes that was an awful level up audgaiufhaduf do the growth rates change for Corrin? idek ahahah (no they don’t seem to)

anyway hope ur ready to Die, Xander if not then.................. well this is Birthright ayyyy lmao

aaanyway we don’t need to see this cutscene we’ve already seen it before many tiiiimes because it’s exactly the saaaaaaaaaame but there’s Leo with his inside out collar again lmao there’s a tag on it and everything that’s cute

You know what I realised the other day though??? A unit’s clothing can get ripped in this game, idk what causes it tho, probably getting low on HP, and it’s certainly not fixed magically w/ healing it’s a funny little detail idek

lmao bye Hana we won’t see u again for a whiiiile ahahh;;;;

onto Chapter 2! :D (I love this so far ngl, oh my Farore)

So! who are the Hoshidan prisoners!? >:D oh yeah we have to see Ganon- GARON, first asjhifadufa Dragon Veins, Ganglari, magic from Valla, yadda yadda yaddaaaaa PRISONERS!

..........oh my Farore-

Kaze don’t be mean >:V I mean.... yeah tea sounds great right now but THAT DOESN’T MATTER U were in their position once, in an alternate universe :Y

........................... Holy Hylia-

...... So does this mean I can call Jakob a grill he certainly does roast ppl a lot in the original-

WHAT ARE THE ODDS

THAT RINKAH REPLACES KAZE- it was really funny tho, when Corrin said ‘Huh? Have you heard of me?’ Rinkah just said nothing, but her mouth was open and her voice line was ‘What?’ so I’m just imagining her like ‘Bitch, I am Hurt’

yeah yeah Dragon Vein tutorial and all that I GET IT- Let’s look at Kaze’s stats and skills! >:D

...... Holy shit he’s a monster

His personal skill is Collector, which is super neat because hey! free stuff! :D He also has Seal Magic which could be good with his terrible less than stellar Resistance, and Good Fortune, which restores up to 20% HP EACH TURN, well.... based on his luck stat, which is..... pretty bad lmao- maybe he has a really good Luck stat growth idk (I peeked at the output file after having played the chapter and his stat growths are HP = 15, Str = 30, Mag = 35, Skill = 50, Spd = 25, Lck = 50, Def = 20, Res = 40, so yeah, pretty decent barring HP and Def haha;;;) But LOOK AT THAT STRENGTH HE’S A BEAST AND A C RANK IN SPEARS THAT’S FANTASTIC UGH- Kaze........ my man, I can’t wait to see what you can Heart Seal into it could probably be really cool, or..... pretty bad, idk anything could happen with this randomiser

I just realised how ironic his randomised class was; he went from a light, speed based Hoshidan class to a bulky, defence based Nohrian class ahahah;;;

but enough digressing! Let’s get started! >:D

....... Goddesses damn it Kaze, why do you have such an adorable laugh u’r gonna kill me- also don’t lie, you can’t use staves :V Anyway, I shouldn’t bother letting Gunter get experience because reasons, this is Birthright-

I’m just gonna end the turn without doing anything and see what happens, because I want them to still be paired up when they attack/still be on the healtile;;;

Rest in pieces, generic samurai.

Look at how quick these guys are to throw their lives away, how cute. Another level uuuuup 1 point to Speed and Luck, wow that’s.... not all that great, but I’m not going to have a lot of luck anyway so I should just take what I can get :V

Jakob no, it’s no use You have a club and your against a sword I mean yeah you survive but not for long m8

....... I hate to break it to ya, Jakob, buuuut

ah jeez, Corrin almost leveled up again-

Dammit Corrin, we could have finished it there and then if you had just HIT HER- no matter, she should be done now

Ayyy, level up for Kaze!

And it’s pretty darn good too! :V

I still can’t believe that Kaze replaces Jakob, like, they couldn’t be any different with how they treat people- I’m not complaining tho; means I get Kaze pretty early on >:3c ayyy he got Defence +2! :D

aww that’s the end of the Chapter ;;u;;

ooooh hey! Jakob’s a Nohr Prince and Rinkah’s a Spear Fighter! (That makes what Jakob said earlier even better lmao;;; ) I can’t wait to see Jakob turn into a mcfreaking DRAGON awwww yeeeaaaah >:3ccccc

oh yeah, Garon talking about ‘kill the Hoshidans!’ all that nonsense like, bruh. nah. I want a Nohr Prince and Spear Fighter, yo. it’s funny how Jakob still stands the way he does tho, but I can’t get a picture of it agusdasusfgha

ahhh, wheesht Xander, u idiot, you know more than anyone that there’s something definitely up with Garon and all that stuff with the vanilla Nohr siblings yadda yadda

Ok you can’t really see it, but there’s Jakob standing the way he usually does lol

Why u gotta be so r00000d it’s still oddly fitting that he’s in the place of Rinkah, tho; it’s like, what Jakob would act like towards Corrin if he hadn’t been their butler, albeit a little less passive aggressive :V

JAKOB I told u to STOP-

aww man, that’s the real end of the chapter

safjuhduhfsdufhasf I wanna play moooore but I shouldn’t make this go on too long ;;;;u;;;; So u can bet that I’ll keep going later hahahah;;;;

Sorry for the low quality images btw, I might look into getting a screenshot plugin at some point, idk I also don’t know how often I should do these, so if anyone who bothered to get this far could tell me what they would think would be best that would be really great :0

[adashofstarshine]

FE: Fates Revelation Review

It’s time for another review! I’ve been stuck at home full of pain and illness for the last four days, so I spent a lot of that time playing FE: Revelation. So whilst I may have blanked a few levels, I have finished the game! I’m probably going to play it again with a male Corrin, I did Conquest with both Corrins so will likely do the same again.

So, in the style of my Conquest review, I will splitting this into Gameplay and Story. I will also be trying to come up with as many positive comments as I can negative ones. Also if I praised/complained about it in the Conquest review, and it’s remained the same, I likely won’t bother mentioning it again unless something was especially wonderful or irksome in this playthrough.

I think I will also be making some other sort of musing posts, some of which are currently half-done in my drafts.

There will be spoilers below. With that in mind onto:

Gameplay

Positives

I enjoyed the game. I think I should probably state that first. I enjoyed playing the game, when playing Conquest I admit I realised how much I missed playing FE games. It’s harder to pick it apart when you’re actually playing it, which helps.

I liked the endgame. It wasn’t the most difficult FE final boss. (That award still goes to Ashera.) However the three stages to the fight (the third I didn’t expect) and the danger of the very high level reinforcements were a good challenge. There was a lot of desperate healing up of units on the first two stages. On the third  Leo  just tanked it. He and Cactus took apart from the eye orb together.

Anankos’ design. I’ve never seen a dragon that looks like that before, well mostly the whole orb, eyes, mouth situation he’s got going there. A good mix of draconic and eldritch. It did lead me to some questions as to whether Anankos is actually a dragon. We know he can control the dead so maybe he’s that orb, and the dragon is a reanimated husk he lives in? Maybe he’s a demon of some kind that wanted to be a god? Nice ideas, but ultimately pointless.

Continued good level design. I said this before but I think this might be the game’s greatest strength. I was sad the opera house got destroyed but I liked the warpy and shifting platform levels in Valla. Also the lift level with Hoshido Dad.

Accessories. I didn’t bother with them before but with the sheer amount of stuff collected in this playthrough I amused myself but giving people silly hats. Sakura got a regal feather. Leo ended up with a nice bow on his head.  I think Oboro got a mask when I got her and never took it off.

Negatives

Needs more Master Seals. I complained about the lack of auto-promotion last time but it was a bigger problem in Revelation with a bigger army. Everyone was getting used in paralogues and challenges for the sake of producing children, so a lot more people were promoting. There just weren’t the master seals or the money available.

Kitting out an Army, I didn’t have the money to kit out that many people. I actually used the extra eshop funds left over from getting the game to get the Ghostly Gold DLC

I do not need to see Cactus’ knickers. I actually only noticed how bad it was until the final cutscene with Azura when I realised she was showing a lot from behind. I could ramble on about the ladies outfits for days but I’m sure someone else has already done that.

Omega Yato looked awful. Fiery chainsaw blade? You might as well have made it the Flaming Raging Poisonous Sword of Doom. Also why is it called the Omega Yato when we’ve been told it’s called the Fire Emblem.

Beach Brawl is hard. Not an overall flaw with the game but I’m trying to get Leo to sit on a beach and I can’t do it.

Story

Positives

Forrest and Midori. (And Kana if I had bothered) I like those three children. I can’t remember the others very well.

Hoshido and Nohr sibling interactions. My favourite supports in this game are between siblings and some of the Nohr-Hoshido royalty reactions too. Expect some on my list of best supports.

I came for the Nohr siblings, I stayed for the Nohr siblings. And there was more of them. That’s a positive. The cutscene where Garon is maniacally laughing, Leo is concerned and Xander is sure Garon is fine was certainly memorable.

Shooting Iago with two ballistae. Subaki on one, Niles on the other, pew pew.  I think Cactus finished him off though.

Bridge-jumping. I found it very funny when Xander (I think) asked what they were supposed to do now and I knew the answer was ‘jump off this bridge’.

Negatives

The revelation came too soon. The game being called Revelation I felt the Revelation itself would be something built up to (though you could call the other two entire games that.) Or there could have been multiple big revelations. The Revelation itself just didn’t feel grand enough to be worth an entire title. I mean, we knew Anankos existed already and that he was a dragon so it didn’t come from nowhere.

Corrin is boring. Out of all the characters I was the least interested in Corrin. I felt that all the siblings, especially the Nohr ones, could have had a lot of very interesting story-telling around them. However the story had to focus around Corrin who just felt generic and bland by the end. Better at the start when they were choosing their own path but once everyone agreed with them they became very generic.

Was I supposed to be able to save Scarlet? Genuine question. I think Kaze dies if you don’t A support him in Birthright but that hasn’t been a problem for me.

Too many people to care about them. This wasn’t a problem in FE10 because your giant army divided up into smaller armies so you more of, and cared more, for your individual units. Out of all the children, only Forrest actually saw a battle and the Nohr retainers who arrived too late to be useful saw none.

How did they get back from space? It probably wasn’t space but how did they get back from the boss fight place which appeared to be floating in a starry magical place.

Boring or nonsensical S supports. I’ll do a post on which supports I like most, few of them will be S supports. By nonsensical I mean the confession didn’t seem to make logical sense, and seemed very tacked on. Also there was a lot of “I can’t wait to get to know you after we marry”... Shouldn’t you do that first?

Sudden ultimate Yato. I thought Corrin would get an upgraded Yato each time they bonded with a special-weapon wielding sibling but no, it happened all at once in a way that felt a bit cheap.

Undervalued Princesses. Not only did they not get special weapons but I feel Camilla and Hinoka got very hard done by. Especially Hinoka who I thought was quite cool but she didn’t do much of anything.

Yeah my ability to focus has just wandered off, so if I have any more points I’ll do review number two after or during playthrough number two. Cactus’ spiritual successor needs an equally ridiculous name. Suggestions welcome. Or feel free to comment on what I’ve said, I like chatting about these things! (May be slow with replies because I’m ill but I’ve very enthusiastic regardless.)

[pestopascal]

what do you think of takumi and ryouma's relationship?

I’m 90% sure I’ve answered something like this already but I can’t be bothered going through my tag so...

Honestly I think something to take into consideration is that Ryouma does love his family even if he’s goddamn horrible at showing it. And, yes, that does include Takumi, as much as he thinks that Ryouma hates him, or has no time for him, or tries to smother and protect him. Ryouma truly does love and respect Takumi, and honestly does want the best for him. Considering the whole “father dead step sibling stolen family ripped apart” thing that kind of hangs over his head, Ryouma does want to protect those left in, unfortunately, some of the worst ways. In saying that, he does have the slightest tendency to favour Hinoka over both Takumi and Sakura, and I’ve already said that 100 times by now. You can attribute it to anything I’ve said about their relationship dynamic, or the present age-gap between family members, effects of Chevalier, positions in royal family, etc.

Regardless, from his support with Takumi, it’s revealed that he really doesn’t let Takumi do his own thing as far as combat goes. Takumi, naturally, is a little frustrated with this, and it goes roundabout about “not being able to fight alongside”. Ryouma ends up talking about how Takumi is quite quick-witted and efficient and how it would be something of interest if Takumi considered a role in government. And, ta-da! Relationship fixed!

Really though, it’s just another way for Ryouma to keep Takumi out of the firing line. He wants to keep what’s left of his mangled family together. Birthright or revelation route, it really doesn’t matter (although slightly more the former than the latter). And if it means shoving Takumi into some dusty room and having him argue for the rest of his life, Ryouma will see to it. I mean, he could try to fix his relationship with his brother, by actually listening to Takumi and what he actually wants vs what Ryouma thinks he needs, but that kind of closure isn’t really there in the game. And then we have Conquest, where Ryouma’s favouritism for Hinoka shines through rip Takumi. Takumi doesn’t really catch a break around Ryouma, though, like if we’re being super serious here. 

Ryouma does care for Takumi though. Just to reiterate: he does care. Ryouma just doesn’t listen. He basically listens to his own voice and decides what’s best for Takumi. And before some people go around harping about abuse or neglect or something else (whatever tumblr’s buzzword of the month is), don’t slap that label on their relationship. It’s broken. Mostly due to circumstance. There are some efforts to fix it in game, as they actually train together and you can take that as a constant thing. It would take something after the game to show how it is slowly but steadily improving. Considering the restrictions of what the game can show too is something to also consider in any of the relationships. But I digress.

I really can’t talk on Takumi’s behalf, just because, not gonna lie, I’ve never really gone into his sort of stuff and I’ve been told I’ve gotten his character incredibly wrong a number of times so can’t even make headcanons for him. Maybe it’s because I don’t relate to his situation, maybe it’s because I actually have a good relationship with my family and don’t have crippling anxiety. The only thing I find mildly relatable is the swinging inferiority/superiority complex, but that’s not really something in the larger spectrum of things. Doesn’t mean I don’t like Takumi of course, I do, but, y’know. Characters like him are never relatable, and then there’s just how much people end up projecting on him and warping him (which you see more often than not). So, I can’t really offer any thoughts for Takumi on this because I might be incredibly wrong. I’m sure someone will tell me if I am.

[gascon-en-exil]

I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: Conquest Part 1

Prologue

Opening Chapters

Chapters 6-14, in which if you squint really hard there might be a plot in there somewhere.

Chapter 6

But let’s not be unfair right from the start. Conquest offers what I consider the best version of Chapter 6, both as a narrative introduction to the route and as a gameplay challenge fitting the difficulty of what’s to come. Birthright is basically just Ryoma soloing Xander and Revelation throws you against generics, but here you have to make use of all the Nohr royals to defeat all but one unit on the Hoshidan side - and being able to take care of Ryoma quickly enough nets you a prize of sorts in that you don’t have to beat up an unarmed Sakura. The chapter also sets up the tense undercurrent of Conquest that Corrin chose wrong, that the Hoshidans (except Takumi) think they’ve been brainwashed and that their love for their adopted siblings is meaningless. On the one hand it feels rather spineless that what is supposedly a villain campaign is hesitant to allow Corrin to own their choice and makes it sound like blatant railroading by the player, but on the other there’s something to be said for the contrast between how Xander and Ryoma deal with Corrin’s decision. After two refusals in Birthright Xander is happy to label Corrin a traitor and becomes determined to kill them for their choice, whereas Ryoma persists in his brainwashing theory and in so doing denies Corrin’s agency completely. That actually works fairly well as setup for an antagonist - if we allow that Ryoma is one, of course, and the game itself seems uncomfortable with the concept.

Chapter 7

...And all my goodwill toward this story dries up almost immediately. There’s flat villainy, there’s a bunch of self-doubt from Corrin over their choice, and there’s foreshadowing that only adds to the confusion if you already know what’s going on. It’s kind of a mess, and it’s pretty much all downhill from here.

I have little to say about this chapter as it stands, except that it’s appropriately difficult and that the conflict feels fitting in terms of tone and atmosphere...even though it only exists because of the aforementioned flat villainy. I instead want to zero in on the moment pictured above, in which Garon “prays” to Anankos to deliver unto him the plot of the next few chapters in front of Corrin and Iago and the Nohr royals. Bizarrely, it’s Iago who goes furthest in calling Garon out on how absurd this is, though not even he bothers to ask who or what Anankos is or if he’s the same entity as Nohr’s Dusk Dragon.

Ok, I know I might be the only person in the fandom who regularly complains about the absence of pseudo-Catholic elements in Fates when they’re present in every other game in the series, but on a fundamental level I do get it. The priest -> sage/war monk class line from Awakening was given to Hoshido, so it makes perfect sense that those classes would be shifted over to the blend of Shintoism and Buddhism that comprises Japanese spirituality. It’s also not unheard of for a nation or group of people in FE to worship a dark dragon/god in lieu of the main organized faith, ex. the Lopytrians from Jugdral, Rigel’s Duma Faithful, and Plegia’s Grimleal. As seen with Salem from FE5 and Tharja and Henry from 13 it’s even fairly common for playable dark magic users in the games to come from the ranks of those faiths. I therefore don’t have a problem with the theory that there’s a theological element to Nohr’s dark mages and that it ties into the Dusk Dragon - who may or may not also be Anankos - in some way. The problem is that we never see any definitive evidence that this is the case, not even enough to understand how unusual it is in this scene to see Garon praying to Anankos. When Iago sounds like the closest thing to a voice of a reason you know the plot’s got some problems. For all we’re told Nohr’s clergy are just bookworms moonlighting as strippers with a crow feather fetish.

Chapter 8

It’s strange how easy it is to forget this guy exists since he only appears in Conquest in this one chapter, but the Ice Tribe maids do indeed have a father. Where was he during Chapter 17 of Birthright?

This brings up an interesting - or as some would probably call it, lazy - quirk of Fates’s map design. The early and midgame sections of all three routes are full of maps that get reused across routes, or different maps of the same location like the previous one and Birthright Chapter 18. I’m feeling rather charitable about this decision personally, for two reasons:

1) In most cases the reused maps are approached from different angles and feature different, sometimes opposing gimmicks. The Ice Tribe village map, for example, sees you racing to visit as many villages as possible in Conquest but encourages you to avoid them in Birthright, and the function of the Dragon Veins in the middle of the route differs depending on the route.

2) Fates’s worldbuilding needs all the help it can get, and visiting the same locations in multiple routes adds a degree of continuity that the story on its own often struggles to display.

See, cost-cutting measures don’t have to be a bad thing if you use them creatively! 

This chapter also deserves some praise for having a more plausible point of conflict than its Wind Tribe counterpart in Birthright. Instead of Iago’s shenanigans Elise grabs the conflict ball because no one taught her basic diplomacy, and Corrin saves the day through their first of many acts of pacifism on this route. It is a bit strange to have the characters talking about how Corrin’s army spared everyone just after you’ve finished mowing down a bunch of generics, but not unlike Niles I can use my imagination.

Chapter 9

A wild loli appears! Ugh...Nyx is one of several characters in Fates who could have been interesting with better execution. As it is, her best use is as a punchline or somebody’s fap material of course.

This chapter has nothing to do with her though really. Instead it’s just a set of contrivances - how did a Hoshidan force make it so deeply into Nohr so quickly (for comparison, Corrin’s army reaches the same location in Birthright by Chapter 20), and why did they bring Azura all this way with them if their only plan was to kill her? I do appreciate the reminder that Nohr and Hoshido are actually at war now as the rest of the Conquest’s early plot is more concerned with putting down rebellions, but some kind of logical reason for Azura’s reappearance would have been nice.

Still, this chapter goes further than most at showing an explicit example of Hoshidan racism, even if Azura is quick to absolve the royals (except Takumi, I assume) of any wrongdoing. I genuinely have no idea if we’re meant to interpret this as Stockholm Syndrome, or if the writers couldn’t bear to vilify all of Hoshido even for one chapter.

Chapter 10

Like a number of other defense maps in the series, this is the most infamous chapter of its game, and depending on who you’re using and how it can indeed live up to its reputation. I don’t care for how this makes for an uneven bump in Conquest’s difficulty curve, but with such varied chapter goals and mechanics on this route that was likely inevitable at some point.

For all that it’s a memorable piece of gameplay though there’s not too much to talk about in terms of story. Takumi is established as a strong and motivated antagonist right from his first reappearance after the route split, and as I said back in Birthright it’s a good look for him. He and Oboro are among the few Hoshidans who really make more sense as antagonists than as allies, and even though it devolves into yet another round of possession in the end there’s something very real to Takumi’s feelings of betrayal and inadequacy, to say nothing of his grief over his mother which unlike in Birthright barely comes up otherwise.

Also, Camilla is here, but with only a bit of retainer banter to flesh her out she’s more or less the same as FE10 Haar in Chapter 2-E of that game: overleveled flying death, with only a few stray bits of effective damage to worry about.

Chapter 11

The Sevenfold Sanctuary appears again, this time with tricky skill combos to contend with like archers with Counter and ninjas with Lunge as well as more of the by now common enemy pair-ups and a boss with an unfair enemy-only weapon. Does anyone else find it strange just how many such weapons exist in Fates?

In this route it’s the Hoshidans who get to troll Corrin, dragging the Rainbow Sage up Mount Sagesse for no real reason and doing their best to not sound like they’re invading a sovereign territory and kidnapping its most venerable inhabitant who also happens to be an ancient dragon. Granted the Nohrians’ mission feels a bit confused as well, as dialogue vacillates between Garon wanting to conquer Notre Sagesse and everyone else wanting the Rainbow Sage’s power. The two sort of come together in the end with Iago ordering the Sage’s death, though if there’s a logical explanation for Garon/Anankos’s continued desire to see Corrin suffer but not die it’s beyond me. That Corrin gets an eventual sword power-up out of the deal feels almost accidental on this route.

Incidentally, while he doesn’t get the gravity of a potential death scene in this version I do like how Kaze joins up with the Nohrians. It conveys the subtext of his connection to Corrin while not coming across as a weird obsession like his approximate counterpart Silas does in Birthright. Speaking of which, I’ve noticed that Silas gets a decent amount of the protagonist chorus roles in Conquest even when some of the royals are available. Eh...they are supposed to be BFFs.

Chapter 12

Now that’s just not as funny as the version of this picture with Takumi.

Elise comes down with a case of the plot, and as a consequence we bear witness to Ryoma’s most infamous act of dickishly non-heroic behavior. I’ve seen it argued back and forth that Ryoma withholding medicine from Elise in an attempt to coerce Corrin into returning to Hoshido constitutes a war crime, but regardless of semantics it is a surprisingly underhanded tactic for someone like him. Now that I think about it Birthright shows off this side of him as well, when he disguises himself as a Nohrian soldier at Cheve to ambush Leo. Not exactly becoming a shining exemplar of heroism here awkwardly forced into the antagonist role...but then he goes off about how his retainers have a more righteous cause than Xander’s and suddenly I lose what little sympathy I had for him. Sure, one of the retainers he’s insulted is Peri, but on the whole that’s an eminently hateable level of self-righteous posturing.

This chapter is quite fun, if a bit chaotic with all the random effects from the pots. For some reason I always forget about the turn limit, which can become an unexpected source of stress when there are shrine maidens spamming status staves to slow you down and such. Fates (and Conquest specifically) is the one game other than Thracia that frequently turns enemy staff wielders into serious threats, and this chapter combined with Azama’s Hexing Rod in the previous one show that off thoroughly.

Chapter 13

Pictured: a subtle and nuanced depiction of villainy.

Aside from his sudden reappearance and this one still, Hans is actually...not that bad here though? Corrin points out how weird it is that they (and the player) are expected to forgive him after he attempted to kill Corrin at the Bottomless Canyon, and the worst atrocities of Hans’s army - particularly Scarlet’s death - are effectively gruesome because they’re left for the player to imagine. It’s comparable to how FE8 handles the ghastly presence of Orson’s wife. It is pretty silly how much is made over Hans clearly enjoying his work when Peri was recruited in the last chapter and Reina is also in this game (in this chapter, even), or that explicit bloodlust among the playable cast has shown up before in past FEs in characters like FE7 Karel. Player-centered morality, yay!

In any case, there’s also a good deal of genuine character complexity on display in this chapter too. Takumi is still consumed by grief and rage and lashes out specifically at the bond Corrin shares with the Nohrian sisters, calling attention to his increasing isolation from even his own siblings. Between taking an arrow in a cutscene and last chapter’s illness Elise just can’t catch a break, can she? Camilla too gets to show a rare bit of character for this route, encouraging Corrin to keep their head down and go along with Garon’s orders because self-centered pragmatism is how she’s learned to survive in situations where she can’t solve problems with violence and/or sex. 

Chapter 14

What an incredibly effective disguise. No one would ever recognize her. 

Ok, ok, the audience at the opera is seeing her from a distance and obscured by all the water effects, but it’s still pretty dumb that Corrin of all people can’t put two and two together here.

Honestly, as much as I enjoy the opera house setting and praised its appearance in Birthright this chapter all falls into that same generally silly vein. There’s again no logical explanation provided for Garon’s trip to Nestra, the enemy combatants on this map are a random squad of Hoshidans unrelated to the unfolding story, Keaton’s recruitment has even less buildup than Kaden’s did, and everything culminates in Leo teaching Corrin the obscure and arcane art of lying and in so doing bequeathing him with a sword upgrade because that’s what passes for (anti)heroism on this route. There’s not even much in the way of gameplay to discuss, which is disappointing when contrasted against the Birthright version. 

I would however like to close this post by reiterating the point I made at the start: so far, this route is severely lacking in an actual plot. All of Corrin’s movements since returning to Nohr have been directed by Garon (and Anankos by extension, though his motives remain vague even if you know the full story). In a way this helps to reinforce the feeling that the Nohrian royals are trapped in abusive situation, though that would be an unusually deep psychological reading of what is in reality an unfocused plot. The following chapter and what comes of it ought to be proof enough that any similarities between Conquest’s narrative structure and the familial issues of its main cast are purely coincidental. 

Next time: Conquest Chapter 15 - 20