#don't let the disappointment I have w/ certain tropes fool you I am loving the game so far

[loregoddess]

Hit the halfway(?) point of Azure Gleam (to the end of Ch9 aka the final chapter of Part I), some some mid-game spoilery thoughts below

I’m...actually really disappointed Miklan died? I dunno if there’s a way to speed through the map and prevent him from dying although the wiki suggests his death is scripted into the story itself so...yeah. But I was really hoping for an honest effort from the writers at a proper redemption arc, but instead they fell back on the tried and true “redemption equals death” trope which is...honestly an exhausted and boring trope in my personal opinion. I wanna see a character who did terrible things suffer and work to atone for their deeds and truly move forward to become a better person, even if (or especially if) the people they wronged don’t forgive them, because that’s a much more interesting story to me than “actually they could have been a better person, but lost their life in being better (i.e. by defending something important to the protagonists)”. It’s just...eh. Miklan was so much more interesting in Hopes than he was in Houses, and his arc could have been so much more compelling, but instead I got stuck with this. Well, I suppose it’s better than the “actually he turns traitor and joins Edelgard bc she promises him whatever bc of her meritocracy-based ideology” which would have been objectively worse in my opinion, so there’s that I guess.

That said, aside from the hiccup of whatever the fuck is going on with Sothis’s characterization, which I lowkey hate, most of the character writing and story writing so far is really strong. I think it’s interesting the game allows you to recruit certain characters from the enemy army, but a few of them (mainly Dorothea) will call Shez out being like “sure, death or betrayal were my only options and I don’t want to die so I guess I have to betray the people I love what the fuck dude” which is...a bit more nuanced than what I’ve come to expect from any FE writing. But for the Lions kids in general, I really think the writing works well, especially for Felix and Sylvain whom I had mixed feelings about in Houses. I mean, everyone still needs like, fantasy therapy, but still, I like most of the writing so far. Kinda sad that Cyril isn’t playable still, and same goes to Hanneman since given how Sylvain’s writing is going, a support between him and Hanneman would have been fascinating, but the base game is immense, so I’m not unhappy.

Oh, but on the note of characters, Linhardt’s dad looks like a muppet. Also he’s too tall, why is he that tall. I’m loving the new unique characters (esp. since so many minor lords are just generic unit NPCs, rip), but some of these designs are uh...very much some designs alright. I don’t mean that in a bad way though.

Not sure how I feel about whatever is going on w/ Edelgard, since she seems a lot less present as a villain, but hopefully now that the writing team has an idea of what they actually want to do with her, maybe her writing will actually be consistent instead of whatever the mess of Houses’ writing was. I am enjoying the layers of conspiracy though, the Agarthans actually seem like proper villains with story clout now, and I am loving it.

Anyhow, I’m very excited to see where the story goes from here, the game’s been great so far and now that I’ve broken in the mechanics I’m having a lot of fun with the battles as well. Kinda disappointed I can’t fuse weapons at the smith like I could in other Warriors games, but I’ve been able to create some pretty powerful weapons regardless of the smithing limits. Can’t believe the game got me to actually use the expedition function either, since I never touched the tea party mechanic in Houses but once. Actually I suck at talking with characters, but there are some interesting bits of lore hidden in the expedition convos. Hopefully the scripts get lifted and posted somewhere so I can read them all at my leisure.

So now, onward, with...way more characters than I ever needed since the game keeps giving them to me.