Just finished this on the Silver Snow route last night with more than 70 hours on normal+classic. Really great experience, and I will likely do another play through in a few months when there's a lull in games and we're still in quarantine mode.
Quick question - for hard mode, should I do NG+ or would I enjoy the experience starting from scratch again? This was my first FE game, and even I thought normal was a bit too easy.
I'd say go NG+ even if you don't opt in to using its benefits in your next playthrough. I say that because NG+ benefits chain together from playthrough to playthrough. You carry over your renown (with a bonus for each completed playthrough) and the skill levels and class mastery achieved with your students are available to unlock. So at anytime in the future, in your next playthrough or beyond, if you want to unlock skills you mastered with your Black Eagle students from your SS run, they will be available to you. Even if you don't make use of the benefits in your next playthrough, no sense in breaking the chain.Just finished this on the Silver Snow route last night with more than 70 hours on normal+classic. Really great experience, and I will likely do another play through in a few months when there's a lull in games and we're still in quarantine mode.
Quick question - for hard mode, should I do NG+ or would I enjoy the experience starting from scratch again? This was my first FE game, and even I thought normal was a bit too easy.
Well, for the most part you can pick and choose which NG+ benefits to utilize, and which not. The only thing you can't turn off or choose not to use for NG+ is the statue bonuses, which are admittedly significant.
Ultimately it's kind of a tossup. NG+ confers some nice QoL and stacking benefits, but Three Houses' Hard Mode is already one of the easier in the series, so whether you want to reduce it further with increased EXP and the temptation of carried over item access/battalions is up to you.
I'd say go NG+ even if you don't opt in to using its benefits in your next playthrough. I say that because NG+ benefits chain together from playthrough to playthrough. You carry over your renown (with a bonus for each completed playthrough) and the skill levels and class mastery achieved with your students are available to unlock. So at anytime in the future, in your next playthrough or beyond, if you want to unlock skills you mastered with your Black Eagle students from your SS run, they will be available to you. Even if you don't make use of the benefits in your next playthrough, no sense in breaking the chain.
I'm playing NG+ Maddening right now and half the fun is putting together a team of killers that make full use of how I raised them in previous playthroughs. It's very rewarding.
Yeah I also thought it was going to be more asinine gushing about Jerald after the B conversation. Not quite...Oh didn't see the end of this support. Gotta Youtube it now. Thanks for the heads up.
I'd definitely go Blue Lions next over Silver Snow since SS is pretty much just Verdant Wind without the deer.So I decided to finally pick this game back up and give it a go at Maddening. This is a much more fun difficulty for me as Hard was still enjoyable but a tad easy. I have had some pretty interesting challenges to overcome on the Maddening difficulty and it has forced me to strategically use batallions when I rarely used batallions in Hard mode because it never mattered. I have invested far more in authority for my crew as well. I did make the decision to utilize the DLC content, which included 10,000 renown for beating the story DLC and being able to recruit cindered shadows characters (sorry Balthus I left you out because Caspar does your job). I don't figure this makes too much of an impact on the difficulty in the long run.
I do have a question, as I have reached the split paths point in Edelgard's route - is it worth going back to my save after I beat one path and choosing the other? I have already played Claude's route and it seems like Silver Snows may be similar to that one. Plus I haven't played Blue Lions, and I'm not sure I'll ever have the stamina to go back to it, two 90ish hour playthroughs is quite a lot, even though I love this game!
You're free to jump into Cindered Shadows after any route since CS doesn't really spoil anything aside from hinting at what secrets Rhea and the church are keeping, and you already dig through most of that in GD. The rest is self-contained to CS. I'd recommend playing through Cindered Shadows before your next playthrough, in fact, since clearing it allows you to recruit the Ashen Wolves in the main campaign.I got this game on release and sunk a ton of time into it before having it drop off, recently decided to (force) pick it up where I left at chapter 17ish on Golden Deer. Now after nearly 80 hours I'm approaching the end of my first route. Amazing game, love the characters, the world building and history just pulls me in and I want to play more. Only issue is that the game. Takes. Damn. Ages. to play.
That being said I'll finish up the Golden Deer tomorrow after having to pick my partner (Hilda, Marianne or Lysithea) and killing of the last boss (Ill miss my deers...). Which means its time for me to go new game plus with a new house. I always was planning to go GD -> BE -> BL -> Church but was wondering with the new DLC out if its worth playing that first and how it influences other routes? I'm considering it just slotting it after BE or if to many spoilers in it after BL (which is kinda moot since I can't help my self reading the lore on various Fire Emblem wikis).
Constance has supports with Edelgard, Hapi with Dimitri and Balthus with Claude so if you want to watch all their supports you have to do CF, AM and VW.I want to play the Black Eagles path on Lunatic after beating Blue Lions at Hard. Does the dlc break the balance of the game like in Fates? Should I avoid buying/using it if I want a challenge?
Also, do I need to play each path again to see all that the dlc has to offer?
Hard to disagree with that.Having recently beaten Verdant Wind (+CF a while back) I feel like Edelgard is overrated as an antagonist and underrated as a protagonist
not really, the DLC classes are about as strong as the strong classes in the base game, and the ashen wolves are all pretty strong, but not any more so than the stronger units in the base game.I want to play the Black Eagles path on Lunatic after beating Blue Lions at Hard. Does the dlc break the balance of the game like in Fates? Should I avoid buying/using it if I want a challenge?
Also, do I need to play each path again to see all that the dlc has to offer?
I would suggest not doing the special DLC extra missions on free days, they give relatively a lot more experience than everything else.I want to play the Black Eagles path on Lunatic after beating Blue Lions at Hard. Does the dlc break the balance of the game like in Fates? Should I avoid buying/using it if I want a challenge?
Also, do I need to play each path again to see all that the dlc has to offer?
Yokota: There are certainly characters who are exceptionally popular, but I feel like all the characters are loved in Three Houses. There were a lot of characters that we worked really hard to write, so I'm very grateful… But man, I knew Dimitri was gonna be a hit. (Laughs)
I wish they had Flame Emperor as a magic alt to her regular personal classesI really wish Crimson Flower got a lengthy Q&A session with Edelgard, probably sometime shortly after the time skip, in whichshe explains much more of her motivations and prior actions, especially in regards to her whole Flame Emperor persona and the seemingly boneheaded and unnecessarily cruel plan at the very start of the game to have a group of thieves kill some students. I know there's some theories/speculation that that whole thing was more of just a way to scare away the prior professor and have Jeritza take their place (which of course Byleth then throws a wrinkle in that plan), rather than actually performing a massacre of kids, but it's something that would have really helped understand her case and perception with some players to have her outright explain some things to Byleth.
As it is, having the whole Flame Emperor thing get immediately tossed to the side post time-skip and literally not ever mentioned again is weird and jarring.
On a lesser note, it would have been cool to have her Flame Emperor costume as an alt for her.
Yeah, I agree.I really wish Crimson Flower got a lengthy Q&A session with Edelgard, probably sometime shortly after the time skip, in whichshe explains much more of her motivations and prior actions, especially in regards to her whole Flame Emperor persona and the seemingly boneheaded and unnecessarily cruel plan at the very start of the game to have a group of thieves kill some students. I know there's some theories/speculation that that whole thing was more of just a way to scare away the prior professor and have Jeritza take their place (which of course Byleth then throws a wrinkle in that plan), rather than actually performing a massacre of kids, but it's something that would have really helped understand her case and perception with some players to have her outright explain some things to Byleth.
As it is, having the whole Flame Emperor thing get immediately tossed to the side post time-skip and literally not ever mentioned again is weird and jarring.
On a lesser note, it would have been cool to have her Flame Emperor costume as an alt for her.
Yeah, I agree.
I think they were worried that there was already too much info to chew through between the holy tomb and the time skip, and the narrative momentum after the timeskip doesn't leave much room to revisit the past. Still, it would have helped out a lot to have some Q&A to smooth out the transition, cause on my first playthrough I was sitting on a lot of questions until Hubert takes Byleth aside to lay out their real relationship to TWSitD.
What they really needed is to give her a support with Jeritza! I'm utterly perplexed as to why they didn't do that. It would have been a perfect opportunity to give a peak into their actions during White Clouds. I also want more insight into their relationship. It's a hell of thing to just say that teenage El found him wondering the woods and then yada yada yada he's her personal Death Knight now, and leave it at that. C'mon IS/KT, let's dig into that!
I was gonna mention something about the interviews being properly translated now but you beat me to it.Second half of Nintendo Everything's translation of the Nintendo Dream interview was posted today: https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-interview-part-2-byleth-dimitri-eyepatch/
I'm kinda LTTP on this, I think other translations of the whole thing may have been posted earlier, I'm just reading the whole thing now. Anyway it's a really great interview, you can feel all the thought they put into every aspect of the game. I really liked reading how they would write tons of background lore, how much thought they put into the food, or how they purposely wouldn't include things in the foreground of the game (like Hilda's brother) in order to make the game world seem bigger.
Also I laughed at this quote:
"And as it says in the Shadow Library, she even restricted the growth of civilization when it began progressing too quickly for her. There's an answer as to why… but that's a secret for now. (Laughs)"
Have you played Radiant Dawn?Replaying Path of Radiance, it really does make me appreciate, while still flawed, how much better:
Edelgard works as a "breaker of chains" sort of character that Ashnard fails to live up to. Half of the time, he's just lounging around and laughing, waiting for you to get to Crimea's capital while Edelgard actually participates in multiple encounters with your forces as an antagonist. He's not mad so much as a maddeningly badly written mixture of social darwinism and nihilism.
I agree but the Flame Emperor is tossed away for part two in all routes, something which makes more sense in some routes than in others, but still feels pretty weird. It's built as an antagonist or at the very least an extremely gray character, and then when the mask is dropped it's just "well, it was just a mask" which just ends up feeing disappointing, whether you may agree with the character or not.I really wish Crimson Flower got a lengthy Q&A session with Edelgard, probably sometime shortly after the time skip, in whichshe explains much more of her motivations and prior actions, especially in regards to her whole Flame Emperor persona and the seemingly boneheaded and unnecessarily cruel plan at the very start of the game to have a group of thieves kill some students. I know there's some theories/speculation that that whole thing was more of just a way to scare away the prior professor and have Jeritza take their place (which of course Byleth then throws a wrinkle in that plan), rather than actually performing a massacre of kids, but it's something that would have really helped understand her case and perception with some players to have her outright explain some things to Byleth.
As it is, having the whole Flame Emperor thing get immediately tossed to the side post time-skip and literally not ever mentioned again is weird and jarring.
On a lesser note, it would have been cool to have her Flame Emperor costume as an alt for her.
I think it's implied she's recovering (kinda, there could be a lot to discuss about what should happen to her based on SS, but the game gives us no clue in VW so...)Wait I just finished Verdant Wind and
What happened to Rhea?! It never said she died. I wanted to S-rank her! She just vanished or something?
You can only S rank her in Silver Snow.Wait I just finished Verdant Wind and
What happened to Rhea?! It never said she died. I wanted to S-rank her! She just vanished or something?
Wait I just finished Verdant Wind and
What happened to Rhea?! It never said she died. I wanted to S-rank her! She just vanished or something?
I did andHave you played Radiant Dawn?You've missed the context for Ashnard's actions. Heck he even spells it out for you at his dying breath. Though you won't truly get the full picture till Radiant Dawn. He ain't badly written. Ashnard IS an idiot. That's two different things.
Wait... Why am I spoiler tagging something that is over 10+ years old?I did andi'm talking about Path of Radiance specifically within the confines of that game's text because there's a lot of other things in Radiant Dawn that contradict the characterization and/or actions of multiple people in Path of Radiance. Within the context of that game, he doesn't come across as a "man who wants to watch the world burn" nor does he live up to the title of "mad king".
Caspar and Mercedes paralogue unlocks a special scene in the main game.Decided to jump back in and do a Hard+Classic Blue Lions playthrough from scratch. I plan on mostly just using the characters in the house, but are there any people I should recruit for paralogues later on to get good loot?
Caspar and Mercedes paralogue unlocks a special scene in the main game.
The paralogue happens after the timeskip and it unlocks a short 30 seconds dialogue with a nice cg in chapter 20 .Wait, just a special scene? Does the paralogue happen before or after the time skip? I played Caspar a lot on my BE run, and I don't really feel like playing him on BL.
The paralogue happens after the timeskip and it unlocks a short 30 seconds dialogue with a nice cg in chapter 20 .
The rewards are a really good lance and an accessory which nullifies a unit's weakness to bows (if in a flying class) or horseslayers (if in a riding class).
If you don't want to bother with Caspar you can just look it up on youtube.
Edelgard STRONGKSooo, this is my first Fire Emblem game and I just really started sinking my teeth in after beating Persona 5 Royal. Can I get some general tips and guides for this game and the systems. It's a lot to digest.
Don't sleep on battalions. They might not seem like much at first but they're super useful! The passive stat boosts they provide applies for as long as the battalion is equipped and high level battalions can make you pretty beefy. The Gambits they allow you to do are also important. All enemies hit by a gambit can't move on their next turn, so it's a useful was to lock down a bunch of guys with an AoE attack. Higher rank battalions have better range, but the one Byleth starts with will carry you for the first half of the game. If you ever see some enemies lined up, hit them with the battalion. Also the gambit that's arguably the best in the game, Stride, is available on one of the rank E mage battalions.Sooo, this is my first Fire Emblem game and I just really started sinking my teeth in after beating Persona 5 Royal. Can I get some general tips and guides for this game and the systems. It's a lot to digest.