#lore wise Byleth probably

[shadow-yato]

Byleth is good, but Camilla changes the very meta of the Fates, her mere existence changes the tide of battle.

Three Houses is much more flexible, while Byleth is a very good unit, so is a lot of others, I.E Bernie and Edel can match up to their strength (Bernie w/ her personal) They have the sword of creator but before the upgrade it’s. Meh. Curved shot for the win.

But Camilla? Her bases are cracked, her growths just as much, she’ll be solid in any class you put her in. Luck and skill is meh but that’s an easy fix (heart seal for heartseeker and/or tonics + cooking)

She’s pre-promoted, comes in a flying class and a good weapon rank (she can use the dual club on base!!) The way you play would change entirely without her. Chapter 10 without Camilla. Oh dear lord

Her class access is good too! She can friendship for merc, fighter, troubador, and sky knight lines. All offer great choices for her.

Merc line gives access to strong riposte+sol, great to make her a enemy phase menace. Fighter is even better, sol + axefaire access!! Axefaire paired with Trample is like. 10 dmg. Considering her low internal level she’ll get these endgame skills much earlier than most. Troubador is overlooked I think, solely because of access to maid and this daggers. Camilla is good enough that the meh class bonuses can be overlooked- Marry her to Arthur, Laslow, or Keaton and you have a pseudo Sol-Ninja. And sky knight. Darting Blow is just wonderful for a player phase Camilla build.

Rose’s Thorn+Her raw stats her great for attack stance support.

Okay that’s enough infodumping for now I just love fates gameplay. And Camilla.

Anyway vote Camilla now!! Yay!!

[felikatze]

Ooo how was Silver Snow? Still have to play that one :0

okay so context is i started silver snow like. YEARS ago. two years, probably. got 3h burnout. only started playing it again for [extremely secret reasons i will reveal hopefully on the 27th otherwise please do strike me down. anyway.]

which means i played the back half of silver snow's part 2 with like, NO memory of what a slog part 1 was to replay. that is to say, with part 1 done by some... mysterious other being, who was me, once upon a time, it was great!

a lot of moments that were meant to be serious were just. so silly though. but i am NOT the first to say this. like. the magic missles. what else. hubert's posthumous "hey btw u still gotta kill these guys lol."

it's like this game FOR SURE needed another year in the oven cuz the ASSPULLS dear god. like. seteth knows the slitherers exist. at the very least, he knows that there are people who supported nemesis. so could he. i dunno. investigate those guys himself. esp when rhea actually comes back and the two start chatting w flayn and talk abt all this slitherer stuff it's INTERESTING that maybe they could unravel the mystery behind the greatest tragedy to befall them!!

that like, maybe seteth and rhea can find some closure in catching those who killed their family!! that'd be like, COOL, wouldn't it, if seteth, as deuteragonist of silver snow, and the whole church crew, could've, like, sensed that something is Off abt the imperial army, and. yknow. not. had hubert tell them.

WHATEVER. IT'S WHATEVER

i generally LIKED part 2 outside of the Magic Missle Cutscene which just made me laugh so fucking bad. i gotta admit rhea's last speech to byleth actually nearly made me cry cuz it just lays rhea bare and actually shows growth on her part. like in her captivity she very obviously had time to reflect and she at last sees her mother is never coming back, but, at the very least, all this struggle has brought her byleth, her dear child, and that alone makes it all worth it. she acknowledges byleth for who they are and she is so so proud of them. it made me tear up.

and then it's WAGRGRGRRG RHEA TURNS INTO A MONSTER NOW CUZ FUCK YOU WE NEEDED A FINAL BOSS!!!!!

i think the shadowdropped lore of "yah btw all high ranking church members get some of rhea's blood" is quite frankly REALLY GROSS? obviously it's just there so the final map has additional enemies, and is thus a consequence of the setup for the final boss also being a total asspull.

but it's. gross. for. yknow. "the lizard pope has a secret section of the church where she gives people her blood" is. DO I EVEN NEED TO EXPLAIN HERE???

also this totally dilutes that she saved jeralt's life with her blood because jeralt and rhea's relationship was obviously special and complicated compared to other church members and it gave him a unique perspectice on rhea and that HE had a crest of seiros was LORE IMPORTANT because it meant byleth had a higher chance to actually obtain sothis' power and now you're telling me that like, a whole map's worth of fuckers got the same deal for free? without the emotional baggage? hey, fuck you??

the last cutscene where rhea dies in byleth's arms and she's obviously confused and lost and dying so she calls byleth mother even after her whole speech abt byleth being byleth it. it got to me. that was actually good writing in that one.

gameplay wise it was. hm. well i certainly had fun but the final map was TOO LONG. like u need to take out EVERY white beast which means u need to circle the ENTIRE fucking map before u can even THINK abt fighting rhea. whereas in ch20 i just went "fuck this i'm killing edelgard rn" and then i could and i did.

god BLESS the fucking archer brigade (petra, ashe, and last minute addition underlevelled cyril with that one no crest legendary bow), for being the ABSOLUTE HARD CARRIES on this clusterfuck of a final map. combined they could defeat one white beast per turn with that sweet sweet EFFECTIVE DAMAGE.

i will take ashe to endgame every single fucking time and all tier list makers can eat my dust. does ur meta breaker have lockpick utility. no they dont. ashy-boy best boy i will take no arguments.

also who the fuck needs an actual tank when u have seteth. thanks seteth for insane bulk and rally def.

thank u lysithea for customary dark knight baja blasting. lysithea is always good.

ch21 was fucking Confusing bcuz i didnt know where i was supposed to actually go first and ch20 was "wow this is just the blue lions finale except WAYYYYY easier because edelgard cant snipe me."

other maps i do not remember probably because all of them were also on blue lions. i know the ailel map was and FUCK OFF JUDITH. GO AWAY.

the funniest fucking thing is how silver snow just SKIPS the battle of eagle and lion because you dont have any of the house leaders. it just skips over the dramatic midpoint that existed primarily for All of the marketing. seteth drops in. hi byleth. by the way. dimitir is dead. claude has retreated. the empire has taken heavy losses so we gotta warcrime them right this fucking moment. byleth are you in.

yeah sure thing seteth let's fucking roll. time for a false flag operation. hey what's that weird light in the sky it's -

YE OLDE MAGICAL MISSLE!!!!!

anyway yeah. three houses stays three houses. which is to say. a very mixed bag that under the line leaves me kind of ambivalent these days but i could say "yeah that was fun" again considering i have like. no memory of replaying white clouds outside of "oh yeah edelgard was there."

[hecvenwept]

I know this is probably me being desperate for lore bc IntSys hates Nabatean stans but, behold my newest theory about Seteth & Flayn, also tying in with an older headcanon post of mine about how the Nabateans are imho hinted to be the deities/divine aspects of forces of nature of the universe of 3h in general, not just of Fodlan.

Alright so Brigid and Dagda are two countries outside of Fodlan, who are named after two Irish gods, and members of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Dagda (yes, it seems you put a "the" on the front of the name) is known to be Brigid's father. Much like Cichol is Cethleann's father, the two also being named after Irish mythological figures/deities (although iirc those two belong to the Fomorian Cycle, which I'm not sure is related to the TdD, I'm no expert in Irish mythology and only going off of what I could find on the internet real quick).

Here's where it gets interesting: Cichol (3h) is an earth dragon, the earth often being associated with life, crops, fertility, agriculture, etc, which also happen to be the Dagda's primary elements. The Dagda is also associated with strength & wisdom, two defining qualities we know for a fact Cichol (3h) possesses in canon, not to mention being seen as a father-figure king. The real Cichol also seemed to be associated with life and death, as is the Dagda, who could control life and death. Life and death is also seen as an aspect of the earth/nature in many cultures, in the sense that it's mother earth that gives us life and takes it away.

Now, Brigid. While things seem to be a little murkier when it comes to her, it is suggested she may be part of a Triple Deity (from what I understood, that means there were three goddesses with the same name, each one representing a different quality. One of the Brigids was associated with healing, which is 3h Cethleann's defining characteristic). 3h Cethleann is also adored and depicted in art (ex. Saint Cethleann's Love Garland, Ignatz's attempts at painting her), which could be linked to the real Brigid's title as a "goddess loved by the poet". The real Brigid was also praised for her wisdom and caring nature, both of which can be found in 3h Cethleann; she seems wise beyond her (apparent) years, and her famed healing abilities are the embodiment of her caring nature.

As a general observation concerning divine figures outside Fodlan, Petra remarks that there are stories of people in Brigid that looked just like Byleth after their fusion with Sothis, and even had extraordinary abilities such as flight, which is, of course, something that dragons do.

No idea how to end this wall of text tbh, it's evolved into a tangent, but I suppose what I mean by all this is that Cichol and Cethleann are connected to Dagda and Brigid, and that the Nabateans are eldritch beings/draconic aspects of nature that don't belong solely to Fodlan, but watch over the entire world of 3H.

Again, as a disclaimer, I am in no way an expert in Irish mythology. If anyone out there is more educated on the subject, or generally has more information or any observations/corrections about any of the above, I'd love to hear it! In the end, I'm pretty sure IntSys just jammed together a bunch of folklore and myths from various European cultures to make their medieval Europe fantasy dating sim, so I'm not expecting this to actually have any merit in canon, but it's something I love to think about, adding more depth to a story that I love, a story that feels incomplete (especially after Hopes...God), and, to me, feels like it has a lot more potential than people give it credit for!

[brynn-lear]

As someone who has replayed this game a near unhealthy amount (and love Dimitri the most as you can tell lmao) I'd like to tell you that:

"Yeah trust me bro VW is a really good route and I honestly FEEL like it's the complete ending for Byleth. Along w/ SS."

Keyword: feel. Cause there's no canon ending. They're all "happy" endings anyway lmao it doesn't matter.

NOW DON'T GET ME WRONG: I LOVE DIMITRI HE'S MY FAVORITE CHARACTER IN AAAALLL OF FICTION. THAT'S A PRETTY DANG HIGH PEDESTAL!!! Hell, I'm playing BL maddening on a new game right now. But if you have the time, VW is good fun. Anyways I'll try to persuade you as spoiler free and chaotically as I can. This one's for you, Joe Zieja. Here's why you should play VW and FEAR THE DEER!!!:

Lore wise:

GD just kinda... Feels "right" from the start? You can infer from the mock battles directly after picking a house that Manuela teaches Black Eagles and Hanneman teaches Blue Lions. If you pick BE/BL, Manuela will teach GD/Hanneman will teach GD. Ironic I say this when my first route is Blue Lions lol.

You learn more about the history of Fodlan more than the other routes. What was the cutscene at the beginning about? Who was THAT guy Saint Seiros is fighting??? They're answered in both VW & SS. You get sad on SS tho.

In the most non-spoiler as I can get: Fodlán stops being "closed". And you're really not just realizing Claude's dream, but another house leader(s) as well if you think about it... One specific house leader leaves you a note on what you and the deers should do, they trusted you with their dreams at least. It's probably the Claude rizz lmao. Claude just kinda drops his dreams of unification in AM and returns home— CF just... Depends on you. Haha. Hahahahahha. Hahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahah.

I played BL as my first route then GD right after and trust me, the lighter mood was pretty refreshing and the ending was a solid anime-esque moment but in a fun way. Though I was sobbing in the battle in Gronder having to see my man on the other side of the war—

Not really related to the lore but i played BL > GD > CF > SS so my experience was just Depression > Fun Adventure > Rebellion!!! > Depression (2).

My take is if in a story...

You want to see great character development, an emotional redemption arc, and have the plot centered on a single character? Play Azure Moon

You want to find out most of what happened and settle the oldest grudge ever in the continent? Play Verdant Wind

You want to challenge the ideals and system of the continent and finally understand that the game's theme song is in Edelgard's perspective (lmao)? Play Crimson Flower

(I know you played AM but please give Edelgard a shot. She's honestly been through so much to the point the only person she trusts is Hubert. Plus out of all the three lords, she's the one who wants you the most. She even waits outside right after you got the first quest from Rhea. She desperately wants you on her team and it hurts my heart fighting her lol 😭.)

You want to find out your true identity and get haunted by the fact no one has their dreams realized after? Play Silver Snow

The characters:

Claude. The further explanation needed. /j

Okay but for real, Claude is not only pretty charismatic but interesting to dissect. Sure, it's not an "oh lord we need you studied" like my beloved Dimi... But his response to some traumatic events in his life is intriguing, if not, realistic. You can infer from his support conversations that a few things in his upbringing truly made him the man he is. The constant "never underestimate an outsider". The somewhat lacking response to someone's overwhelming grief. Everytime I study this man under a microscope, I see reflections of myself and. oof. Tl;dr, just like Edelgard and Rhea, he's really fascinating.

Lysithea oh heavens my bestie 😭😭😭 idk how to sell you her character w/o spoiling really heavy stuff about her. Just. There's a reason why she has the meanest support conversations— it doesn't excuse her tongue— but it does explain her impatience. I literally want her to be happy. So badly. Plus she's really fricking strong as a unit so recruit her, so warp your best unit to the enemy commander and end a chapter lmfao. I know I did that to Hubert w/ Dimitri.

Leonie is probably a tough sell for a lot of people but I genuinely love her because her reactions feel real. Her admiration for Jeralt walks on a thin line between unhealthy and inspirational. I relate so much to her "commoner" mindset on being frugal, especially since she's practically her small village's scholar. But to me, it doesn't feel right to not recruit her when just like Alois, she's seemingly one of the pseudo-family you have left...

Ignatz is adorable. I'm sorry I don't have a proper explanation for this but he's the first person I've ever recruited in BL and I remember thinking I was gonna marry this dude lmfao (Dimitri hit me with a "no." and swept me off my feet /silly). He's a lot like Ingrid in a way that he believes his dreams (as an artist) cannot happen because he needs to be a knight to help his family's financial stability. This hits me so hard as someone who wants to pursue an art degree but here I am. Studying engineering in college.

Raphael omg- okay sure very few would be attracted to him I get it it's aight but how can anyone hate him? Sometimes, characters can just be "dumb muscle man" and that's fine!! HOWEVER— his backstory is a knife to the chest. He's just a genuinely good person in ways that he's probably the most emotionally mature out of everyone else in the cast unironically 😭. He doesn't bear grudges and empathizes people a lot. Raphael can figure Lysithea and Ignatz out immediately, and the latter wasn't even offended when he did lmao. He's focused on a damn good reason for living: becoming a knight so his little sister can live a stable life in the future.

Marianne. I love her so much. Other than Edelgard and Rhea, she's the only woman I've married. And I played as a man for HER. The CHARACTER GROWTH. I cannot. HER S-SUPPORT WAS SO WORTH IT. IT BROUGHT ME SO MUCH JOY. She gains confidence!!! The moment the timeskip happens, she tells you in the monastery that she came back because she remembered how in the academy she had grown a lot and even got herself some friends. Please. Please recruit her id you're not playing GD. I beg you.

Hilda, every friend I have who played Three Houses absolutely loves her. How can you not be interested right from the moment Claude says that you can't find her image in the dictionary definition for "lazy" cuz she didn't submit it yet 😭 anyways, great unit. Interesting supports (seteth-hilda is really good). HILDA! HILDA! HILDA!-

Other reasons:

Sothis tells you that both sides of time is revealed to you. And by that I mean: you already purchased a pretty dang expensive game so why not know the other routes if you have a lot of free time lolol— /silly

“Come on, teach. Don't make me delete your saves.”

Yandere!Claude Von Riegan x Reader/Player(Byleth)

Happy birthday Claude!!!

Prompt: He knows you're playing. But why aren't you chosing Golden Deer...?

[nahte123456]

Three Houses Theory:Jeralt is why Byleth/Sothis works, and Edelgard is why their power started awakened.

Alright so I did a quick look and couldn't find this theory anywhere, just something I came up with tell me if I'm missing anything or got anything wrong, and tell me if this was said in the game and I missed it. And yes this is marked for spoilers but just to reinforce this, SPOILERS.

So let's start with Sitri, Sitri is apparently the 12th vessel Rhea made to host Sothis, she didn't work and was physically weak but she survived with Sothis' Crest Stone in her, became close to Rhea and eventually married Jeralt and had Byleth where they died right after childbirth, asking Rhea to save Byleth even at there own life, thus Rhea took the Crest Stone from Sitri and put it into Byleth. Now judging by the fact that Sitri is the 12th attempt I think it's safe to assume whatever Rhea was doing to make these 'vessels' was different each time. So I think Sitri was actually a success process, it was the ingredients that were the problem. Whatever blend of Nabatean, human, and Sothis' Crest and anything else was out of balance and rather then working together, it harmed, which is why Sitri is frail. The right mix as it turned out was 99% human blood, and 1%Seiros blood from a Crest, AKA Jeralt. Jeralt had just enough Nabatean in him from his Crest to make Byleth work, if anyone without a Crest, or with a weaker Crest were to have made a child with Sitri it would not have worked, the baby would have either have been a stillbirth or frail as Sitri. So here we have Byleth a healthy vessel, Sothis' mind there, and the vessel can use Sothis' power, a success as long as Sothis wakes up and assumes control. Heck this may even be why Byleth is so strong lore-wise, Byleth is a creation to hold what appears to be a literal Time God, of course they need to be inhumanly strong, with great magic, and good at everything, otherwise Sothis' mass of power would just destroy the vessel.

This is where part 2 of my little theory comes in, Jeralt took Byleth and ran. Ran before Rhea could try to awakening Sothis. So Sothis was there, just asleep. For two decades Byleth was allowed to grow and learn on there own, become there own person. We see at the start of the game Sothis is starting to wake up, but it's still not much, she falls asleep almost right after, can't even remember her name, and shows no indication she can even speak with Byleth when they aren't in that little headspace. This is when the Lords come in looking for protection and Byleth protects Edelgard. And what's so special about Edelgard? Why is she so strong and why is her hair white? She has the Crest Of Flames, she has a touch of Sothis' power, and that's why Sothis can suddenly can suddenly act and use her time powers. Byleth is a mercenary, this can not be the only time they've been afraid for there life and Byleth tells Jeralt this isn't the first time they've dreamed about Sothis, so neither of these things are the reason Sothis can use her powers now, they probably helped but they aren't THE reason. But because Byleth has had like 20 years to grow, and Sothis is just a nice person, Sothis doesn't try to take control or anything, she starts to work together with Byleth. With her new power she can talk to them even when they are awake, and wield her Divine Pulse(somewhat) freely, and of course since Byleth's body was meant to house this power to begin with they can take the strain with relative ease, to make this relationship symbiotic. This even explains Rhea's actions later on, why Rhea not only gave Byleth the Sword Of The Creator but also why she wanted Byleth to sit on Sothis' Throne, she doesn't know about Edelgard's Crest Of Flames, as far as she knows Sothis is still asleep, that one good kick will wake up the Goddess to take control of her vessel. First Rhea makes sure Byleth doesn't have some sort of defect, then she gives them the Sword to try and jump start Sothis, and when that either doesn't work or only works half way in her eyes she tries the throne which could have more connection to Sothis mentally and emotionally. She is not aware that her experiment did work, Sothis is awake and remembering more and more each month.

[ultrakatua]

I’m done. The final map was easy, and funnily enough it allowed some scrub units like Balthus and Edelgard to shine.

And man, I’m feeling sad again :( It feels super weird to think that it’s over for good and we won’t get more content for the game... I know it’s something stupid to say since I’ve already poured over 200 hours into this game, and I still have many things to do like playing Silver Snow, unlocking shittons of supports or testing Maddening... But still... 

I hope we’ll get more of Fódlan in the future, whether through a sequel, a prequel, or even just a basic side story. For any other series I know it wouldn’t be likely, but almost every Fire Emblem game in existence had that sort of stuff, so who knows...

Let me be greedy... I love the world and the characters too much...

Anyway, I loved that DLC a lot! Different from what I expected but not in a bad way. Wish it were longer but well, I still spent 11 hours minus the retries (yeah I play slowly)

imo it throws some well deserved (?) shades to the Church and Rhea. I was never on the “Edelgard’s war feels useless because you don’t see the Church doing bad stuff” team, and even less into the “Claude’s history of oppression doesn’t feel legit because you don’t see it” one (the shit I read, man...), but I think the DLC does a good job to show how fucked up the Church actually is. And Rhea... may have done some things wrong in the end haha 

I’ve already said it, but I’ve always been more on “team Rhea”, in that I think she did the best she could even if it led everything to shit. The most reprehensible stuff we saw so far was her experimentation on Byleth, which was fucked up, mind you, but this DLC opens another can of worms altogether. I’m really, really curious about the new library content. Because it’s clear that her own attempt to resurrect Sothis led to some very fucked-up stuff. Not to mention EVERYTHING steams from her keeping information from others out of fear and distrust...

And of course the Yuri situation, and really, that of all inhabitants of the Abyss, show you that the three lords may have well had end up there as well had the circumstances be different. Edelgard because of her torture. Dimitri after he escaped jail (is there even any canon stuff that can dismiss that idea?). Claude simply by existing as an Almyran in Fódlan. The veiled woman near the altar was spine-chilling. I wonder if she’s supposed to be a reference to another character from a past game? Hearing her mention her mother felt very specific... But I can’t remember any female character leaving the adventurer life.

I never felt like the lords had any sort of alchemy and I think the DLC kinds of bring that point home. It’s not just that they have little interactions... It’s that when they speak to each other they are either distant, or hostile. Edelgard was very shutdown (understandably so, but it’s a missed opportunity imo) and Dimitri acts like he’s Claude’s mom or something every time he opens his mouth .They are highly incompatible in every way haha Also maybe it’s because I’m biased, but I feel like they gave way more screentime to Claude than to the other two? In any cases, the Claude content was good and I’m well fed. It’s funny that Yuri is legit what people expected Claude to be lol

I also liked the small touches, like learning that Gloucester had people spy on Claude, or that Metoday was actually working for the Agartans. The Sitri lore as well, of course, was well needed. 

Unit wise:

-MVPs were Claude, Constance, Linhardt. Lin has healer privileges. Claude and Constance have the benefit of flying and snipping stuff. 

-Ashe, Byleth, Dimitri, Hapi. Ashe was good for much needed chip damage + Retribution. Dimitri was basically the only one able to face tank those fricking Assassins. Byleth was good all around. Hapi had high mobility + tactical nuking.

-Yuri, Hilda. Hilda is in that weird place where she’s too frail, and lacks accuracy. The access to Pegasus knight was useful. Yuri is... a real dodge tank. I’ll give him that. Other than that, 0x2 lol I used him mainly as a heal bot, and his Relic is damn good. The Trickster combat art is also super fun to use.

-Balthus, Edelgard. Balthus kept missing kills, his only saving grace was being able to one-round the illusions in the last map. Edelgard’s only contributions were tanking the cavs in the 5th map and nuking the final boss.

My plans for now on... Well, when I play Silver Snow, I’ll do it with all the Ashen Wolves + the Church staff. And I really, really want to do Golden Deer maddening, with Balthus, Cyril and probably Shamir. I’ll probably go back to Breath of the Wild for now, though.

[benisasoftboi]

Unorganised thoughts on Silver Snow:

When I finished Golden Deer, I said that it had felt like a more traditional Fire Emblem story than Blue Lions. Silver Snow is that but even more so (though GD is still the most trad-FE cast, IMO)

Having already played those two routes, it felt very much like a whirlwind tour of them both, plus another battle thrown in at the end - a battle that probably should have been harder, but I (completely accidentally) built the bulkiest Byleth imaginable, especially resistance wise, plus high magic - and so, by pairing high defensive stats with Nosferatu, I tanked every attack that came my way 

Gaming, for me, is just doing whatever the hell I feel like, stumbling into good results, and then pretending that I did it on purpose

I spent the whole battle with the Dragon Tales theme song stuck in my head. Kind of killed the mood

I really enjoyed that after wrapping up both the Edelgard and TWSITD plots, they basically Persona 4 you by trying to convince you that the whole game’s done now and all that’s left is to chat with everyone - though unlike in P4, there’s very obviously something left to do because they give you a whole month of prep time, rather than just one day

I felt the same way about this on Golden Deer - none of the characters are appropriately shocked by Rhea’s highly questionable actions 

Also - she says she’s going to explain the whole truth! And she doesn’t! Only the Byleth creation stuff! The other revelations from Golden Deer are missing! Rhea! Why! Are! You! Like! This!

This is actually a problem I have with this game as a whole - they want to keep certain lore and secrets exclusive to certain routes, but it results in every story feeling in some way incomplete. Like, Fates gets a lot of crap, but at least you did get a full story from your half (third? never played Revelation) a game for the price of a whole one. Blue Lions gets the worst of it, I think 

Plus, when you know some of said secrets, it makes characters who refuse to share them in other routes seem weirdly (and sometimes, contrivedly) cagey about things they really do not need to be cagey about. See: Claude refusing to tell Dimitri and Byleth in Azure Moon that he wants to End Racism, and instead vagueing about ‘achieving his dream’. This is not Edelgard wanting to conquer Fodlan and dismantle the entire social structure, Claude, your ideals really are not so controversial that you need to be this coy. Dimitri and I are cool, we getcha 

My one sentence review of the whole game is basically: Great characters, great world building, great gameplay - but really, really frustrating plot structure

I’m also really upset that Seteth does not have a dragon form

Speaking of Seteth, I married him this time around. I mostly decided to do it for laughs, but while Byleth/Dedue is still my number one Byleth pairing, I came to really, genuinely like them together. Seteth is one of my favs, now more than ever

It helps that romancing Seteth feels a lot less... creepy than romancing most of the students. I like Linhardt, but romancing him felt very weird to me because I couldn’t get over Byleth having first known him as a 16 year old under their care. Dedue, for the record, doesn’t elicit this response  because he doesn’t really feel as much like a student to me? Role-wise he feels a lot closer to the knights, and it’s just that he's been enrolled as a student for convenience’s sake, which makes him and Byleth feel more equal than they do with most of the other kids. Helps that he’s also on the older end

Anyway, Seteth and Byleth would be the nerdiest couple ever, is the impression I got from their ending. The confession scene made me laugh in how ‘oh we’ve got a lot of work to do - btw wanna get married? - sweet, now let’s get back to work’ it was. Mark Whitten is a gem

It’s also the the first time I felt like the game was actually shipping me with a main lord (Seteth taking that role in the absence of the box lords on this route). Haven’t done Crimson Flower yet, so no opinion on the Edelgard/Byleth relationship yet, but regarding Claude and Dimitri my (pretty damn controversial, possibly a bad idea to put out there) opinions on them with Byleth are that

Claude and Byleth are platonic bros, regardless of Byleth’s gender. I just don’t get any feeling of romance from their relationship at all, and so pairing them off feels weird (to me, personally - I don’t hate the ship or anything, though)

Meanwhile Dimitri 100% had a crush on his teacher at school, but after more than five years of enduring trauma after trauma, and then half a year of beginning to heal (whilst fighting a war culminating in the execution of his step-sister), Dimitri is nowhere near ready for a romantic relationship. And when he is, I wouldn’t want him with any of the main cast, Dimitri x Village Girl OTP. I guess if it has to be anyone, I’d be okay with Mercedes, maybe Marianne - hell, maybe even Claude - but really, I just want him to get a fresh start. I think that’s the healthiest option for him, in the end

I do think it’s a pairing that could work in an AU where Dimitri doesn’t have any of the experiences he has in canon, though 

And again, this is just my personal reading

I’ll also admit that I may be influenced by the fact that his two most popular pairings are with Byleth and Dedue, who I greatly prefer with each other. Mostly because I love Dedue with all my soul and his ending with Byleth is by far his happiest, in my eyes at least. It’s the only one where he puts some distance between himself and Dimitri and evens out the power balance in their relationship, which makes me happy because oh boy, the Dimitri/Dedue relationship is super interesting and compelling, but also (again, by my reading) all kinds of unhealthy as it’s presented for most of the game - power balance issues like I say, the fact that they tend to indulge, even encourage, each other’s worst instincts and behaviours, mutual guilt complexes - like I say, it’s fascinating, but damn screwed up. IMO, they’re one of the best examples I’ve seen of how unhealthy relationships aren’t always the result of one bad person, and how two good people can end up being very bad for each other

Though it is, again, a pairing I can see working (and actually being incredibly cute) in an AU where they’ve lived less horrible lives

And it’s not like I don’t want them to be friends, I just want them to also develop healthier boundaries and equal levels of respect

oh my god none of this has anything to do with silver snow what am I doing

But hey, speaking of Dimitri - I flip flopped on whether I thought his death was handled better or worse here than Golden Deer. It was given, I felt, more appropriate gravitas, but again suffered from ‘Dimitri’s dead! No, Dimitri’s alive! Oh wait, now he’s dead again’ in like, three successive scenes. And then you see his... ghost? I guess?

Dimitri really seems to get the short end of the stick on routes outside his own. Claude’s non-Deer roles were, in both cases I’ve played, much stronger and more fitting, and Edelgard is Edelgard

Maybe he’ll be good in Crimson Flower. Please. I miss Dimitri mattering. He’s probably my favourite of the three

There’s a point - obviously I don’t fully know Edelgard yet, but from what I got from the White Clouds section, above anything else she strikes me as an incredibly realistic depiction of a slightly edgy, extremely idealistic, but also highly naive and short-sighted teenager

Her whole goal, it seems, is meritocracy. She hates the crest system and the nobility, and she wants to create a system of equal opportunity. I can get behind that, but I really hope she’s prepared to accept the fact that true equal opportunity is basically impossible without recreating The Giver, as inequality is always more complex than one single factor being to blame for everything. Has Edelgard considered other limitations that make true meritocracy difficult to achieve? Has she been working on, say, a comprehensive benefits system? Or is she more of a libertarian type, and so primarily all about negative freedom and removing direct oppression? I hope Crimson Flower goes into detail on this, I’d be genuinely interested to know

I also find it interesting that she gets very angry about the fact that people hurt her and her family as a means to their own ends, so she decides that her own ends are to eliminate the system that lead to that happening - and she doesn’t care who she has to hurt in the process

This isn’t a CinemaSins *ding* plot hole observation, I genuinely think it’s interesting, and not actually that unrealistic

I also suppose her goal is no less naive than End All Racism By Being Nice To People, but Claude isn’t killing and persecuting people in attempt to achieve that, so it invites less scrutiny

I do wonder if I would have felt more strongly positively about her if she’d been my first playthrough. I do believe she’s a person that sincerely means well, and she’s certainly sympathetic, but - hmm. I’ll make my mind up when I finish CF

Anyway, paired endings. A few that I got include Raphael and Bernadetta (by far my favourite Bernie ending so far, seriously, what is that Caspar ending), Shamir and Leonie, which was cute and goofy (as Leonie’s endings tend to be, I notice, I do like that girl), Felix and Dorothea (not my favourite for either, but cute), Sylvain and Mercedes (the same but even cuter), Cyril and Petra (which felt wrong, partly because I love Cysithea a hell of a lot, and also because despite knowing there’s only about a year between them, Petra looks so much older pre-time skip), Ferdie and Marianne (super wholesome and sweet), and Linhardt and Caspar (my boyyyyssss that I refuse to ever separate again)

Not sure what I’m going to aim for on CF aside from keeping those boys together and also Ferdie/Hubert, as I’ve Heard Things

Flayn and Manuela have an A support so I figured they had a paired ending and it turns out they do not, which means Manuela was alone forever and Flayn ran away because apparently she hated having Byleth for a step mother I guess, rude

My Byleth (Myleth?) was prepared to be the best step mother in the history of the world, so offended

I realised ‘Javelins of Light’ is one of my absolute favourite tracks in the whole game. Mostly because it sounds like something out of Danganronpa, which made me nostalgic

I also like ‘Guardian of Starlight’ for somehow managing to sound like a Danganronpa/PMD: Explorers crossover track

I love how out of nowhere the Immaculate One fight is. It really does just feel like they needed something to distinguish the route from Verdant Wind outside of Claude not being around, so they just had a map that was less cool in every way except for the dragon

Is there an explanation for why Nemesis doesn’t show up on this route?

Also - I didn’t mention this in Golden Deer thoughts but I also found that final battle way, way easier than it was probably meant to be because I’d made everyone into a flier and so the floor damage hazard was meaningless

Which I totally did on purpose and not so I could make a stupid joke post about my all-wyvern team 

Anyway, in conclusion, Silver Snow was a good route, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would (I’d kind of thought it was just going to be GD without Claude, which isn’t... totally wrong, but it’s got some other stuff going on too), I liked Seteth getting to have a bigger role, I thought it had the best final boss (if not the best final boss map), and I liked that I got some more Dragon Lore (never a bad thing)

please don’t yell at me for my controversial shipping opinions 

[lady-byleth]

So I’ve been thinking, and I’ve com to theorize that the order the routes were written was AM->VW/SS->CF. The theory being that AM was the original concept for the game, hence the early game archetypes in the class, the cut content, the connection the class had to a couple of early game bosses and the fact it’s the least lore heavy. Then they thought they had a good thing going and set to work on two more routes. This would be why VW is the most complete lore wise, and why they wound up (1/2)

Personally I figured it was Azure Moon -> Verdant Wind -> Silver Snow/Crimson Flower

Picture this, you have three very complete routes that all compliment each other in one way of another, one for each house, and then realize you're basically cheating your customers out of a Lord and that's gonna result in some bad backlash

So you take the route that involves her house and cut out the unique battles and the ones meant to mirror the other routes, tweak them a little, put them together and shake that shit until a full route comes out

But shit, now you gotta fit this into the lore somehow, but you've already made Edie the enemy and you don't have time to rewrite the whole thing...so you tweak what you've written so far to at least not have a full blown villain as protagonist, fuck up, realize you'll need to make Rhea actually evil to pull this off, say fuck it and do it anyway

The way I see it, it used to be the Church fighting Edie's forces at Derdriu and Fhirdiad - either to protect the other lords or drive the Empire out, maybe even to pick Rhea up at Fhirdiad - but they simply plucked out Rhea, put Edie in her place and then changed some dialogue. That would explain why Rhea isn't playable and why Gronder Field happens off screen for some reason in Silver Snow. They took out the battles where Claude and Dimitri live or die so they had to get them out of the story somehow and also needed an explanation why Edie wasn't present once until Enbarr

I think she also has the fewest supports outside her house - only Lysithea - and that's probably why she's the only Lord who can S Support both Byleths. If her S Support art was drawn later they could very easily make it so that they could replace Byleth's hand in hers but they'd have to draw two whole new S Support cgs for the other two since Byleth is fully visible there. They instead used that time to quickly whip up S Support pictures for Bylad instead - quickly because those are very off model compared to Bylass - and crammed them in

Plus, that way they have and excuse to not draw gay S Supports because they're not that good about it yet. You'll notice it's the Bi S Supports that don't show Byleth's face or even parts of the body aside from Edie, which I'd say is why it's only Linhardt who can romance Bylad

Does that make sense at all? I've been thinking about the routes a lot but it's like 5:30 in the morning and brain not booted up yet

[kendrixtermina]

You seem like pretty knowable about Edelgard lore and motivation, so I've been meaning to ask. What exactly was the catalyst that made Edelgard hate the Church of Seiros so much? I know they've done a ton of shitty stuff in general, but what made Edelgard dislike them personally? I looked on the wiki and it either wasn't on there yet or I just didn't understand it. (I want to be able to eventually explain it to my sister who so far thinks Edelgard is evil, she hasn't finished the AM route yet).

IDK if this is something one can be “knowledgeable” about I just played the same game everyone else did, I’m no authority I just like analyzing fictional works for fun.

And whoever added that recent lengthy edit to the wiki article… let’s just say their opinions are discernible.  But they might say the same about me. 

Good vs Sympathetic

First there are some interesting premises hidden in this question - why would a personal motivation be more convincing that a net negative impact on the world at large? It’s the latter a much better reason? 

Like there’s a big difference between saying “they had legit reasons for their feelings/actions” (you could say this even about rhea) and saying that someone’s a force for good. Being understandable and consistent isn’t goodness; IT’s just good writing, and “they can’t help it, of course they acted like this, look at what happened to them” is more an argument for someone being sympathetic/understandable than good. Murder or manslaughter? How much can we blame them for their bad deeds. 

You might have very good personal reasons to hate someone or something, and pursuing that hate at the expense of others could still be a very selfish thing. There are your feelings, and then there’s how you act on them. There are many ways to act on the same feeling. 

Conversely, it is possible to be repulsed by evil or mismanagement just because of its own wrongness/stupidity. If you read about how some evil deed happened to total strangers in a foreign country, you would still be angry and you might even vote, sign petitions or attent protests so it doesn’t keep happening. 

If the Church of Seiros is doing objectively bad stuff, is that not enough to oppose it? Not only does Seiros/Rhea rule everything from the shadows, she’s accountable to no one, and she’s doing a bad job at it. TWSITD are her enemies too but they’re running rampant under her nose and in the recent past, deposed the Emperor and assasinated the king of faerghus to install their own agents.

Rhea may not have intended to let xenophobia, inequality, corruption, obsession with crests and instability to fester but that’s still what happened - and people can’t file complaints because she’s ruling in secret and anyone who complaints in branded a heretic. Almost everyone in the cast has been affected by those issues - the “peace” at the start of the story is illusory. Also, this whole shadow war between Seiros and Agartha is being carried out on the backs of the ordinary people who have no say in anything. At least if you know who the king/lord is you know who to rebel against if there’s no bread.

It’s no good. And as the heir to the largest territory, Edelgard is one of the few people who have a chance to stop it. It’s not easy for her either, given that the empire is thoroughly infiltrated by TWSID agents who would never have let her butt touch the throne if she didn’t play ball, or at least not without a bloody fight that might well end with the empire in splinter factions, aafter all, her father had already been reduced to a puppet ruler (see what happens to Dimitri when he returns to faerghus - Arundel is said to mantain his own personal army)

And since it was one of her ancestors who sold out Fodlan to seiros for power, she might feel that it’s her responsibility to put it right.

The real power isn’t with the people or even the nobles and the rulers of the three factions - it’s with Rhea and TWSITD. They keep burning up people without end for their own causes that have nothing to do with the people themselves, they both see humans as “beasts”… Shouldn’t that be stopped? 

To stop evil is a much better motivation than petty personal grudges.

Edelgard’s thinking

The first thing to understand with Edelgard is that she’s a big picture thinker through and through. For better or for worse she looks at and decides everything based on how it will look in a history book a few centuries down the line. (For prime examples of evidence look at the Dorothea support or some of her lines after fighting Dimitri)

This isn’t to say that she doesn’t have bias or personal influences like everyone else, but she values and strives for objectivity. That means questioning herself alot (something you wouldn’t see that much on routes other than her own as she keeps the tough leader face on in public), it means putting what yields the best results over what she wants or likes, and it means looking at the greater whole. 

She doesn’t just want to get revenge on the specific people who wronged her; She wants to ensue that it never happens to anyone else. She wants to undo the whole situation that allowed for it to happen - even if that means postponing her own revenge and working with those she hates the most. This is very much her putting efficiency and the end result above her own feelings. 

It may well have been Thales and his henchmen who cut her open, but they couldn’t have done it without the cooperation of the corrupt imperial nobles. (likewise, they worked with xenophobic kingdom nobles who didn’t like Dimitri’s dad making peace with the foreigners to orchestrate the Duscur nonsense)

Why were they in power? How were they convinced to allow for such a thing and give Thales the ressources he wanted/needed? Because of the social system that Seiros set up so that crests are equated with power.  

There will always be assholes and evil people, but how much damage they cause depends on wether the system they operate in lets them get away with it.

Also, even when you look just at TWSITD’s involvement, Edelgard’s siblings were butchered to make her a mighty tool for the shadow conflict. Just as Rhea in turn did her own experiments to revive sothis and “regain all that she lost”

So even on the most direct level, what happened was a result of the shadow conflict. 

And it is instrumental to keep in mind that Edelgard wants to remove both shadow factions. 

Her beef’s strictly with them - she knew that the Kingdom and Alliance would probably fight her if she went against the church and was fully prepared to pay that price, but that’s a side effect of going where the enemy is - she handed out letters and pamphlets informing ppl of the church’s evils and asking them to choose sides. 

TWSITD have fearsome power and have infiltrated the empire, but they’re few. The Church got its claws in most local governments. Why not throw the power of the former at the latter, to take down the stronger enemy, and then take out the Agarthans when your power’s consolidated? It’s a decision not about whom to fight, but about whom to fight first. 

Also because of her big-picture thinking she looks at the absolute numbers. In her own words, she’s going for the path of least casualties. 

PPl tend to judge harm caused by action stronger than harm caused by inaction but actually the harm is the same. Acting to remove the two shadow factions will have a cost (the war) but not acting also has a cost - that the dysfuction goes on and on forever. 

She doesn’t particularly want power if it were up to her she’d have chosen a normal ordinary life and she says so on many occasions. But she can stop it, stop the endless sacrifice and dysfunction, so she can’t just let it continue and do nothing. 

Of course with that sorta logic you always have to consider how each action impacts the end result so you don’t destroy all you want to protect because you tell yourself that it will pay off later, after all ‘the many’ are just an abstraction for a lot of individuals. But Edelgard’s not really losing sight of that, she keeps looking to minimize the casualties where she can, she offers people a chance to surrender, you get some lecture questions where she’s genuinely considering what do with rhea if she DOES surrender. 

It’s worth noting that on her route, the war ends the quickest and only the Kingdom lands get significantly wrecked (and the Kingdom always gets wrecked even if it gets rebuild afterwards, it was already in a lot of chaos before the war even started). You have to fight the peeps you don’t recruit but that’s no different in the other routes. Claude manages to seize control of the Church without going through the knights so he manages to pull off an at least equivalent end result (both shadow factions removed, society permanently changed) while offing fewer of the named characters, and lets not fail to give him credit for that,  but he might not have, if Edelgard hadn’t conveniently removed Rhea and just generally blazed a convenient trail for him to, in his own words, “finish the job for her”. Taking in the church with Rhea still in place didn’t work out too well for poor Dimitri, I seem to recall that she used the poor man as a meatshield and set his capital on fire - which is why Claude wisely didn’t touch that hot potato in any route where he doesn’t have Byleth as a bargaining chip. 

Of course that said, going too hard on the comparison would seem to miss the point. While Claude’s and Edelgard’s routes are about their respective grand visions for the future and their badassery as great inspiring leaders, the Church and Kingdom routes are more about people coming together to weather difficult circumstances. Dimitri isn’t really cut out to be a good ruler; but the beauty of his story is how he eventually does his best to become one anyways through the aid of his loyal friends. It’s an underdog story. 

If your sister prefers that sort of story (or just Dimitri himself, as a more emotional, relatable type of hero and a well-crafted, compelling and memorable character) that’s just her personal taste/ good right. 

Edelgard’s personal biases

She surely has a bit of “broken pedestal syndrome” going on, the very human tendency to absolutely reject things you once idealized once they’re proven to be flawed, to assume that if you were lied to often enough, then everything must be a lie… she sure reads what she learns of Seiros’ past actions in a bad light and assumed that Seteth & the others are guiltier/ more complicit than they actually are. 

The problem with Rhea is that she’s selfish, not that she’s a dragon. But if she were the only example you know for what a dragon is like? You might not be too fond of dragons. It’s not like she protests if Byleth spares Flayn and Seteth. 

She doesn’t really know Rhea’s motivation so she has to judge her by her actions and the results of those, and her actions, for all that they come from fear and loneliness, are indistinguishable from power lust by the time that Rhea’s subjugated 30 generations of humans for something their remote ancestors did 1000 years ago. Would she ever have let them go? 

So it doesn’t matter that she only got the partial story on the relics, it’s not the relics she took issue with, but the current state of the world. also Rhea is the one who erased the true records. So the 10 elites totally had it comming, fine - but Rhea’s the one who disseminated the myth that they were heroes in the first place. 

Claude only gets the truth by squeezing it out of Rhea and even then only at the very end, ppl who say that Edelgard “acted on false information” act like Claude just stumbled across the truth with minimal effort. That’s actually more unfair to Claude than to Edelgard if you ask me.... he’s a man who has gathering info as his top priority 24/7

Edelgard’s certainly more steeped in the perspective of her home country where the church is awarded significance and if it turns out to not be good then it’s utterly vile.  Claude has the sort of more detached perspective that he has because he happened to come from another country. Edelgard’s aiming for detachment but that’s only possible to a certain extent when something ruined the lives of nearly everyone you know

At the same time whatever her personal sentiments may be (and im not gonna deny that she does hate the Seiros religion), as far as her actions and decisions go, the engage conversation she has when you have her fight Rhea at the battle:

Rhea:

No matter your reasons, I cannot permit you to go on living any longer!

Edelgard:

The feeling is mutual. I must put a stop to your reign of tyranny!

Rhea:

You must know what a fool you are. The greatest of sins is to make an enemy of the goddess herself!

Edelgard:

I have only made an enemy of the church, not of the faith.

She says in several supports that she personally considers relying on the goddess to be an overly dependent attitude that doesn’t do people good, but that’s just her opinion, she’s not stopping anyone from praying in the privacy of their homes cause thats none of her business and she’s not a tyrant (see what happens if you recruit Marianne or Mercedes, her support with Manuela or the Marianne/Ferdinand support on the CF route, which reveals that he’s actually a believer.)

She just wants the Church, and Rhea specifically, out of politics… exactly what we have in any modern-day country that isn’t Saudi Arabia or the Vatican. 

Megalomania seems the most likely or politically expedient thing to claim but in the end her beef’s not with Rhea’s reasons but the results of her actions which is stagnation, mismanagement and repression. 

Your Actual Question/ Personal Reasons and Catalysts

Honestly? If we’re talking on a strictly emotional/personal level? (As much as that’s an incomplete picture with such a reason-driven character)

She probably bawled for the goddess to save her and her family down in the dungeons, again and again, and no one answered. 

She spent much of her early life just being dragged around, first being kidnapped by Arundel and held captive in the kingdom, then she was thrown in a filthy dungeon where she endured relentless pain and could do nothing but watch as her siblings died one by one. 

She was utterly helpless, a passive plaything of destiny - and then she decided she was done being passive and letting the universe kick her around. She was going to be proactive and do all she could to be in control of her own fate. 

See also the inspiring speeches that she gives to Petra and Lysithea at various points - “Don’t surrender yourself to your fate!” 

Blind reliance on the faith, to her, represents that very surrender, so she rejects it. 

This fear and rejection of being helpless and having zero control is also one of the reasons why she consistently chooses death on her own terms over life on someone elses’. 

That would still not be a valid justification if she wanted to, like, stop everyone from praying, but that’s not what she’s doing. 

[mark-lyn-and-friends]

The Power Escalation in Three Houses is Insane

Byleth with green hair and the Sword of the Creator is probably the most powerful Fire Emblem character lore-wise. If you’ve seen the cutscene after fighting Kronya you know why. The only being I can think that can come close Is Awakening’s Naga since she can send people through time, but Byleth can control time to an extent along with what he can do with the Sword of the Creator. Also, why are there things that are the equivalent of orbital strikes later in the game? Just something I found funny. 

[historyoftheemblem]

Three Houses Feb. Direct analysis

Admin Zebra here, with some of my observations from the new footage from the latest Nintendo Direct. I wrote some stuff about the first trailer, like commentary on Byleth’s sleeve inspiration from medieval fashion and the (maybe) symbolism behind the Japanese title, but this time I’ll be going all the way through.

First things first: We got an official logo. I kinda like the typeface on the old one (pictured below) more, to be honest.

Obviously this was a rough working title, given they didn’t even have the classic Fire Emblem logo on it, but the new logo’s typeface for Three Houses feels a bit too much. The capitalized T and H, sure, but having the everything like that, and with that kerning? Not feeling it.

Well, I got a degree in design so it’s my sworn duty to nitpick about these things, but this isn’t analysis, so let’s move on.

Lore

We’re introduced to the continent’s major powers and how they convene at the Monastery in Garreg Mach: the Adrestian Empire (Red Black Eagles, Edelgard), Faerghus (Blue Lions, Dimitri), and the Leicester Alliance (Golden Deer, Claude).

Each country has its own house at the monastery a la Harry Potter, and those houses are led by each country’s first-in-line for succession, whom we were introduced to in the first trailer.

Edelgard, as seen by the above picture, is the first-in-line for succession in the Adrestian Empire. Interestingly, they seem to use “Emperor” as a gender-neutral term for the ruler, as the narration calls her the future emperor rather than the future empress.

In the background, we can make out a few characters seen elsewhere in the video (from left-to-right): Dorothea, Ferdinand, Linhardt, Caspar, and Petra. (Edelgard’s the one with the red magic glyph.) Bernadetta is seen hiding under a book a few seconds later, so she’s in the Black Eagles as well.

We unfortunately don’t get a group shot of the Blue Lions, so the members of this house are largely unknown. I don’t think we see anyone aside from Dimitri in the background video in any other scene, either. There are a few kids whose affiliation we don’t see, like Annette, Mercedes (whom Annette calls Mercie), and Sylvain, so they might be in his group.

Lastly, Claude’s group. Pink-haired Hilda, who was seen as one of Byleth’s opponents in the first trailer, is in his group. Later in the video, we get the names for the large blonde man and the orange-haired girl: Raphael and Leonie.

The Church of Seiros is also headquartered in Garreg Mach as the predominant religion on the continent, and it has its own military force, the Knights of Seiros. The seem to be led by this woman, whom we get a better shot of towards the end of the trailer.

She resembles the woman depicted throughout the first trailer, but it’s hard to tell whether she got an updated look over the past few months, is another character entirely, or changed into another outfit.

We also get to meet the probably-manakete girl seen at the end of the first trailer and get a name for her: Sothis.

A cursory search on her name brings me to the Egyptian goddess/constellation name Sopdet, which translated into Greek as Sothis. (More info on that in the link.) Here, Sothis can communicate with Byleth, the main character, through their mind. How or why this happens won’t be clear until we see the game proper, but the narration suggests that it’s tied to the “unexpected incident” that revealed a “hidden power within” that leads to Byleth traveling to Garreg at the start of the story.

Speaking of which...

Assuming that the first image, with Byleth traveling with the three house leaders and his father Jeralt, takes place at the beginning, it seems that the two images in a scene towards the end of the trailer are set before that -- the aforementioned unexpected incident.

In the second image, that clearly would’ve been a fatal blow on Byleth; his back is turned to the bandit, but then it rewinds to the point where the bandit lunges. Instead of having his back towards the bandit to shield Edelgard, Byleth knocks the axe out of the bandit’s hand with the power of weapon triangle advantage.

This likely indicates two things: 1) a return of the Mila���s Turnwheel function from SoV, and 2) Byleth has some sort of power to either see a bit into the future, or rewind time.

Gameplay

Byleth seems to be something of an avatar unit, which was already known from the first trailer when all the official material called them “Your character” instead of the name shown in the trailer. You get to pick between a male and female form, with no known option for further customization -- fair in that there seem to be quite a number of rendered cutscenes a la SoV (and the cutscene animations are by the same team), which would make customizations tough.

I'm more or less neutral about F!Byleth’s design, simply because I disagree with the avatar option to begin with. I prefer set-in-stone characters, and having an avatar whom we don’t have control over personality-wise makes me wonder why they’re even an avatar to begin with. (For example, I love Dragalia’s MC Euden, but I do not at all understand why we label him with a name of our choosing. I respect his personality and his reasoning, but he is not an avatar of me.)

Three Houses boasts greater interaction between not only the player characters, but as well as between characters as well. As depicted in the first trailer, there’s a semi open-world function that allows you to explore Garreg Mach and interact with characters there. I’m looking forward to it, though I do have my reservations depending on how it plays out.

Combat, First Trailer:

Combat, Second Trailer:

The action select screen seems to have changed, but aside from Attack to Atk, it’s hard to tell whether these are complete changes, or simply caused by having different functions unlocked, having different classes, or because Edelgard is a main character where Bernadetta is not (i.e. Formation and Equip). Combat Arts are now also selected on the attack screen, as seen a few seconds later.

Comparing the weapon selection screens, it seems to have been restructured to show values more clearly. Bernadetta also has the three green triangles next to her HP, which is shown throughout several battle screens in this trailer, but I’m not quite sure what that’s for yet.

The new level-up screen. As will be analyzed later, class options in Three Houses seems to be much freer than previous titles, hence the Class Mastery section in the level-up screen. Professor Level seems to be related to Training, which will be covered later. Battalion is, naturally, the troops following each character’s lead; it seems that battalions can be switched out.

Given the Withdraw and Confirm selections at the bottom-right corner, this seems to be an alternative to the Arena. I assume units can’t die here, because that would be pretty difficult to explain to parents. “Hey uhh your son died during a sparring session, whoops.”

Ah, studying. I’m so glad I’m out of school now. You can tutor students individually, as a batch (I assume that’s what Auto-Tutor and Group Task are), or change an individual student’s studying goals.

We get a look at Dorothea’s tutoring as an example. People have gotten fidgety about that heart on the completion screen as a sign of some sort of affection system with the main character, BUT.

Immediately afterwards, we see Linhardt’s goals screen. Looking at that top-right gauge, we see the >w< meter on Linhardt’s has 4 (full) gauges. Meanwhile, Dorothea had 3 maximum gauges, and the 1 gauge left is consumed during training. IF my deductions are correct (pleasebecorrectpleasebecorrect), the heart gauge may build up the training meter when you get good results from training.

Also notable from this screen is that Linhardt’s class is Noble, the same as Bernadetta’s earlier. (Edelgard’s class shown in the first trailer is Aristocrat, which is... similar?) It seems that most students will start off with a similar class and then progress through different ones based on player preference and their own particular strengths. As seen with Dorothea, it seems that Swords and Reason are two of her strengths, while Faith is a weakness.

We are also shown various skills that can be trained:

Weapons: Swords, Lances, Axes, Bows, and Fighting(?)

Character (unofficial term): Reason, Faith, Authority

Unit: Heavy Armor, Riding (Cavalry), Flying

I assume Fighting is a weapon-type skill because Caspar is shown using claws right afterwards.

If you look closely throughout the video, you’ll see female generic soldiers, which is a nice touch, personally. While this is more story-related, it’s interesting that the enemy is labeled “Western Church”. This either suggests that there are different branches of the Church of Seiros, or that this is a split faction (perhaps the “rebellions” the narrator speaks about earlier in the video as one of the enemies you must fight).

This is the customized class screen mentioned earlier. As is apparently from the side list, it seems that characters can access all of those classes, and aren’t limited to just a few. Obviously, characters will probably lean towards certain classes, but it opens a lot of possibilities. Also, Edelgard can now lawfully pillage villages now with the Brigand certification exam. All this time we thought they were just brutes, but apparently it’s a meritorious profession!

This seems to be how supports will play out in Three Houses, which is fine by me. Having stronger bonds between characters provides a so-called “Gambit Boost”, which seems to provide a boost to combat arts. (Edelgard, in some unknown class, uses Coordinated Gambit.)

The rest of the trailer is mostly just cutscenes, one part which I already addressed earlier. The other shots are too vague to really comment on. If there’s one thing I didn’t really like about the trailer, it’s that it didn’t really give us a sense of an overarching conflict. All we know is that there’s a delicate balance between the three nations, it’s probably getting broken, goddesses/dragons are involved, and the crests are to blame.

[crest-of-flames]

I started over because I screwed up my Byleth. Well, she was probably not screwed forever but I was slightly dissatisfied with the way I trained her so obviously the only way was to start over. That's not extreme at all.

I can't figure out what I wanna do with Petra, Linhardt and Byleth.

Linhardt would be so perfect for the Gremory master class but Gremory is female only. So Holy Knight? But then all of that talent for Reason Magic goes down the drain. I could do Dark Knight, but then I'd lose a good healer and his crest would be useless.

As for Petra, her strengths and her speed make her a superb thief/assassin. But chest and door keys are abundant and she isn't as mobile as a cavalier carrying keys. I could also make her a pegasus knight but that would mean training things that aren't her strengths. She could take longer to get there than other students.

And Byleth, well, I know Byleth can become something very specific tailored to their strengths at some point (no idea whrn), but the outfit is shitty in my opinion(both of then) and I'm not gonna do that to her after I already switched out her default outfit for the officer's academy outfit sans cape. I was thinking Holy Knight to capitalize on her budding talent in faith magic but I also don't have a character in mind for Gremory (the candidate I have will be a dancer because it fits lore wise). Or maybe Falcon Knight. I don't have a flying unit either.

It is a hard choice. And I know I can recruit characters but I want to recruit as little students as possible because I wanna see what role they play as enemies in the war phase. Teachers are fair game, though.