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#if fact i was PISSED dimitri just handed his people to rhea like what a betrayal of trust??
faroreswinds · 1 year
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Tumblr had originally deleted my answer to this ask here. At the time, I was really pissed and just throw out an answer because I had spent a good hour writing it up thoughtfully.
But now let’s try this again, with proper answers this time. However, these will still be short because I have lost the energy to give a more thorough answer. This isn’t nearly as nicely written as my original answer was. 
It's not supposed to be propaganda.
Edelgard’s speech and general rhetoric is propaganda. 
Propaganda- information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
This isn’t even really controversial. 
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Not sure what she means. Deny the people power? 
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Nobility came from Nemesis, not the Church. Also, the Church was not involved with making the Alliance at all. No idea why she mentioned war here. 
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This is the only point that may have some truth, but any organization needs money. Governments tax, businesses put costs on goods and services, and non-profit organizations get donations.
And if this is an issue, the leader of the church Edelgard does endorse does actually care about living in wealth, so she’s being pretty hypocritical here. 
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Now we can’t be sure what she actually tells Claude since the game only tells us she sent a letter and doesn’t tell us the contents of said letter:
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But Claude in this route barely ever says anything about the Church or Dimitri up until this point. In fact, he only says these two things:
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Even Judith calls him out on suddenly buying into the Empire’s words without so much as questioning it. 
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And the Empire clearly didn’t elaborate on what their words because Claude is surprised Rhea is a dragon. So he apparently never asked any more questions. 
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Claude is planning to bring down the Church even before he talks to Edelgard. See: Azure Gleam.
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This is never stated. This is only assumed if you believe he always wanted to kill Rhea himself or something. He only ever asks if Dimitri will continue to buddy up with the Church. 
Claude cares more about gaining the upper hand against the Empire so that his nation gains influence and power. 
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And he is also super willing to betray Edelgard too:
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In Houses, Claude wanted to depose Rhea as well but only didn't because Houses!Edelgard was a worse threat (Hopes!Edelgard is tolerable to Claude), because (of avatar-worship) Byleth is going to succeed Rhea and because Rhea goes through a bit of development due to her time as Edelgard's prisoner which made her more reasonable.
This is never stated. What happens is you gain support points if you suggest if he hopes Rhea is dead. 
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This only implies he disliked Rhea, not that he wanted to kill her himself. He even wonders what a world would look like without Rhea. 
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And Claude's criticisms of the Church never change. There is no moment Verdant says that Claude was wrong about the xenophobia stemming from the Church. He just learns Rhea's backstory, that's it, and in a support with Cyril, he learns that maybe it's possible to talk to Rhea.
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He says this before they even talk to Rhea or rescue her. He starts to realize that the school, ran by the Central Church, actually had all sort of people there. 
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Here he starts to realize that maybe it’s not the teachings. Again, we haven’t even rescued Rhea yet at this point. 
And then after rescuing Rhea, he realized his dream was going to take more work than just winning the war. 
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Not to mention that we get Church NPCs being racist in Three Houses 
Everyone side has a racist, not necessarily all the religious ones.
or other NPCs pointing out how the Church lets the nobility do what they want
You mean how the Church is strong-armed by the nobles? Either the Church is too strong, or not strong enough. Which is it?
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Do you choose to ignore the criticisms made against the Church? Do you find them all invalid? There are plenty of characters that agree with what Claude says about the Church including Dimitri, Lorenz, Marianne, Hapi. Holst etc.
No. There are some legit criticisms. What I want is proof. Characters can say all they want, but if the game contradicts them or doesn’t support their claims, it means nothing to me. 
Like, the Church sent assassins. And we have proof they did. Boom, that’s a legit criticism. 
The Church keeping the borders closed? Uuuhhh, I need evidence of that first. Which there isn’t any. At all. In fact, it’s the opposite. The Church is AG was rebuilding a Duscur town without even making the residents convert. 
I don’t take characters at their word. Especially if the game contradicts them.
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somepinkthing · 3 years
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Are people really out there saying claude and dimitri are wrong for not letting themselves be invaded by the empire? "They're the ones dragging out the war" sjfhskkj. Yes, I do imagine that most wars would end faster if the other side would simply give it up without a fight and let themselves be taken over. That's not incorrect. But that's generally not how it works, you know that right? People generally resist takeovers from a foreign power, regardless of what their goals are?
It's especially weird when directed towards claude? Who declared neutrality for five years?! The kingdom at least was actively at war with the empire, but claude would have kept his people out of it—did keep them out of it. If anything, my criticism would be that it's stupid to hold out for that long without fighting back. A massive armed force is already taking out your neighbor and standing at your borders, you must know you're next. Are you just gonna wait until there are no allies left? And criticism is tempered with the knowledge that it might've been all he could do to keep the alliance from civil war. Even with the argument that claude could understand edelgard's views and backed down in the end anyways, that's when he had no fight left?! If it's either peace or senseless death with no hope of victory, then ofc choose peace! But you're saying he should have just been like well that sounds ok... here's my country. Without even trying to resist?
And it'd be one thing if edelgard had the support of the general public within the kingdom or the alliance and would win a popular vote. Then I'd say that they should listen to their people and give it up. But, from what I saw, that's generally not the case. She had support from the lords we established to be the skeeviest ones in their respective countries. Which makes sense! We get to uncover her background and reasons but to the common folk? Farmers and merchants and villagers? This is a military takeover at best and a persecution of their faith at worst. And even if it doesn't look like either of those, it still means war. It still means costing them their resources and, possibly, their lives. Why would they support it? And, in turn, why wouldn't their leaders try to stop that from happening?
The funniest part is that edelgard literally warned you about this! From the very beginning she accepted that her actions could only result in war. Even banked on it! Somehow y'all took that to mean she thinks dimitri and claude are terrible people instead of her acknowledgement that, if she marches her army into other people's borders, they miiight get upset. I'm not saying that "if you're going to surrender anyways, why bother resisting me at all" scene didn't exist. It did! Ironically, edelgard definitely does slide dangerously into the idea that others ought to just bow down to the superior force,,, but at least she's not deluded herself into believing that's realistic, even if her reasoning is flawed. Because it isn't! For incredibly obvious reasons! So. How the hell did we come to this conclusion? That people can actually be bad and wrong for not immediately submitting to sexy, sexy military incursion???
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butwhatifidothis · 3 years
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Who on your side is going to call you out? Literally every recruitable character except Bernadetta and Lindhardt? And you CAN'T objectively say that the route leaves an objectively worse off Fodlan. A lot of the characters have the exact same single endings they do in other routes. Meaning a lot of their endings are nice and happy and hopeful despite the fact they aided in the conquest of a nation. Hell, some single character endings specific to crimson flower STILL end happily despite this. Alois happily moves to remire and becomes a farmer with his family. Mercedes opens up an orphanage. Also you can't really use Felix' single ending as a mark against Crimson flower, seeing as that's also his ending in all his non blue lions endings.
Those quotes aren't actually addressing Byleth's actions beyond said characters being pissed at Byleth. 
The demonic beasts are never mentioned. The fact that you are aiding in conquest and genocide isn't talked about, just the fact that you are on the opposing side. And some of those characters that are pissed at Byleth and questioning them ALSO *conviently* forget those grievances once they're recruited. Suddenly everybody's all for blindly following byleth in their aiding the conquest of fodlann and the potential genocide of the last few nabateans.
So what, is edelgard "im going to assassinate my classmates and immediately get murdered by bandits in that attempt and nemesis did nothing wrong!" Adrestia suddenly master manipulator? Are all the characters just so blindly loyal to byleth that they're willing to ignore their morals? a
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You broke down exactly why, no matter how you look at it, villain route or not, CF falls flat! Because inconsistent writing dictates that 3H can't go all the way with making CF/Edelgard too bad! The full scope of Edelgard's actions never being addressed, even off of CF (the Demonic Beasts are never called out, but the use of them is very clearly villainous given what they are, to use one of your examples)! This is why I have issues with CF - not because oh shit you're the bad guy, but in this regard they don't go far enough! This is exactly why my feelings are mixed towards CF, because of these exact flaws within it.
But even with that, there are still some things of what you said I don't quite agree with?
Like, Edelgard's and Hubert's endings apparently don't point to CF being a villain route, but Alois and Mercedes' do point it to not being one? Why are the latter's endings being given more weight than the former's?
"Those quotes aren't actually addressing Byleth's actions beyond said characters being pissed at Byleth."
...Um... yeah they are? Because they're pissed at Byleth for siding with Edelgard and the Empire? They're not just randomly mad at Byleth for no reason - the characters know what Edelgard and the Empire have done, they don't have to go down the laundry list when they express their anger at Byleth joining her/them. When Ignatz says “We can’t place the future of Fódlan in Edelgard’s hands. If you’re allied with the Empire, I have no choice but to fight you," him not specifically laying out every single crime Edelgard has done does not suddenly mean that those crimes aren't what he's referring to. Shamir saying “You still align yourself with the emperor? What a shame. Let’s make this quick. I don’t want the loser to suffer," doesn't mean that she's just peaved at Byleth for no reason. Ingrid’s quote, “You have chosen to assist the Empire, even while knowing of their deeds. I am truly disappointed in you, Professor. Prepare yourself, heel of the Empire! A wretch like you will never be qualified to rule over Fódlan!” very clearly lays it out that it is all that the Empire has done that is the reason why she’s mad at you and why she thinks you’d be a shitty ruler (and if Byleth is shitty for choosing to side with Edelgard, then that inherently means that Edelgard is also shitty).
Why are they mad at Byleth? Why are they criticizing you specifically joining the Empire? Why are none of them saying “Gee Byleth, it’s pretty ass of you to join Claude’s side, you heartless bitch” on VW? Or similar statement towards Byleth on AM and SS? Why is the Empire unique in being called evil, bloody, savage, etc.? It’s because the action of joining the Empire - joining Edelgard - is a bad one, one that throws away morals to chase the false image of “revolution” Edelgard posits. 
So what, is edelgard "im going to assassinate my classmates and immediately get murdered by bandits in that attempt and nemesis did nothing wrong!" Adrestia suddenly master manipulator? Are all the characters just so blindly loyal to byleth that they're willing to ignore their morals?
The answer? Yes. The same way that Byleth is blindingly loyal to Edelgard and throws away their canonical hatred of TWS to follow her, the other characters throw away themselves to blindingly follow Byleth. Byleth places their trust in Edelgard despite all of the horrible things she’s done, and their character becomes worse for it - the same thing happens to the cast that foolishly decide to continue placing their trust in Byleth despite siding with the villain Edelgard. They either stagnate in their character progression or outright regress, the exact same as Byleth, because CF as a route is all about regression. That’s Edelgard’s whole motivation. It’s not moving forward to a new future, it’s going back to how Fodlan used to be - back under complete Imperial control, with a Hresvelg as the one ruler of Fodlan. 
And Edelgard having one shitty plan and being wrong about history doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to make others look worse than her, how to prop herself up as the hero of the story - we see this from Ladislava, someone who is genuinely completely loyal to Edelgard specifically, that characters genuinely fall for Edelgard’s words. We see this in how she makes Dimitri and Rhea and Claude into these targets that must be destroyed “for the good of Fodlan,” that she can easily shove any and all responsibility for her actions onto her victims. We see this in how she’s just “taking back humanity’s freedom” when she slaughters a heartbroken and maddened Rhea - maddened due to her actions - only to shove humanity under her actually tyrannical rule. Hell, her being ignorant of history again falls back into how CF is partly about ignorance - you’re always ignorant to the depths of your horrific actions due to blind loyalty, so being wrong about history and never being corrected is par for the course.
Where CF falls short is the following: 
the aforementioned endings that always remain the same even on CF, 
where certain characters aren’t given enough attention despite being on CF (Ingrid definitely needed a Felix treatment for specifically this route, since she’s going after the Kingdom directly, for example), 
where even with the idea of the BE getting influenced by the regression of CF they still way too easily side with Edelgard (Ferdinand is by far the worse victim of this), 
where the end result of Fodlan is unification no matter what route you do (more the game overall that suffers from this tbh), 
where the characters don’t mention the depths of Edelgard’s actions off of CF (which is partly why the BE staying with Edelgard on CF comes across poorly, because they never really delve into her actions so them not doing so on CF doesn’t come across very well) - VW is the worst offender of this, as while it makes some sense to have Edelgard be a sympathetic villain on the other routes, doing the same here makes literally no sense (you only know her as a warmonger trying to murder you).
I know this isn’t like, the most popular opinion, but I don’t find it to be an intrinsically bad idea to have the player initially think that they’re not playing a villain route until they go back over the numerous, frankly loud undertones of villainy and evil you help participate in and realize “oh shit wait a minute.” Dragging down characters with you on your path of ignorance and regression? Sounds cool! Playing the other routes and seeing what you essentially look like to all of the people you fight on CF - a heartless conqueror stamping down on all opposition - as you play from the infinitely more heroic POV of the other two lords (+ Byleth’s independent POV) and see Edelgard in the light of a villain (that light the non-recruited/non-CF characters see you in)? Neat! Realizing that you’ve helped a lying, racist, imperialistic warmonger get exactly what she wants as she drags down Fodlan in darkness and tyranny? Interesting! The water is just muddied by poor writing decisions/oversights, but it is very much still (villainous) water. CF is flawed, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t what it is.
But I will ask you this nonnie, if you don’t mind! If you don’t think CF is a villain route, what is it to you? Genuinely curious! 
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msbluebell · 5 years
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I really liked the picture you reblogged with the Sothis Cult worshipping Byleth/Cult!AU. How do you think that would come about? Maybe Jeralt decides not to leave and Byleth is raised in the church (maybe in secret for safety reasons?) and then is debuted when the Lords join the school? Because what better way to ensure the Goddess is safe then to socialize them with the future leaders of Fodlan? ;D
Byleth being raised in the Church, under Rhea’s strict care, is probably exactly how such a situation would come about.
As far as Rhea is concerned, Byleth is the success that she’s finally reached, a clear, living, body for the Goddess that can hold the power. All she has to do is wait for Byleth to be grown enough to sit on the throne, and then she’ll finally have her mother back. 
Rhea’s interactions with Byleth, and her supports, clearly show exactly what she sees in them. Byleth is her mother, reborn. It’s up to interpretation whether she sees Byleth, themselves, as the Goddess just without memory, or sees a living body walking around that will house her mother.
I think, based on her dialog and the scene where she cradles a wounded Byleth in her lap and tries to comfort them, and based on her repeated use of the phrase “...you are my...”, I believe that she does, in fact, see Byleth as her mother reincarnated into another form and just bereft of the memories that make them Sothis.
...and she’s not even wrong if that’s what she believes, because that’s exactly the situation.
So as far as Rhea is concerned, she basically has her mother, the Goddess Sothis, back. They just need time for the Divine power to awaken.
As much as Rhea would like to keep Byleth secret, it’s pretty obvious that there’s a kid she favors running around. Especially with Jeralt freely having the ability to raise the kid himself within Garreg Mach. Everyone knows Rhea favors the child, for whatever reason. Most speculated, at first, that there was a blood relation of some sort.
But then Byleth starts getting older. 
Byleth is a strange child. They don’t smile, or cry, or do things a child would typically do. They seem almost too old for their small body, and their gaze pierces the soul. They’re almost too skilled at swords and magics, and it’s somewhat unnerving. 
Rhea clothes Byleth in the types of outfits Sothis used to wear. Long blue dresses, anklets, braids in the hair, and flowers and crown. She makes a lot of the clothes herself.
Jeralt is...unnerved by the way Rhea dotes on Byleth, the way she dresses her. He tried to ignore it at first. After all, Rhea created their mother, so that kinda make her Byleth’s family, their grandmother or something...right? And she clearly knows more about clothes and stuff for kids than he does.
But it’s...creepy. He knows something is up with his kid, he knows Rhea knows what it is, and there’s only so long he can go without answers.
He demands to know one knight, after Byleth is tucked away in bed, in an apartment Rhea had personally constructed for them, that he meets her to ask what in the name of the flames is going on with his kid. 
Rhea is vague at first, but Jeralt is pissed, and persistent. She finally opens up after hours of needling. 
Byleth is the goddess reborn, and once she’s grown, she’ll awaken her powers and memories.
It was supposed to be said in private, in confidence, in secret.
The nun that overheard them from where she hid behind the turn of the wall either didn’t care, or didn’t realize. She just rushed off to tell the others what she heard from the Divine Archbishop herself.
By noon half of Garreg Mach has heard the rumor, whether they believe or not is mixed, because it was just one nun that spread the word, but still, half believe and are looking at tiny Byleth with her too fine clothes and her too serious face in a different light. Half the monastery is convinced now, and start treating her as they would the goddess herself.
There’s fierce debate over the matter, accusations of blasphemy. Jeralt is becoming more and more creeped out by this, especially when people start thinking he should be sainted or something. He’s heard the word “Father of the Divine” uttered when he walks by and he doesn’t like it.
Things really start getting out of hand with fights and debates. It gets to the point where Rhea has no choice but to speak on the matter.
It’s too late to hide the news, so she confirms everything.
It...makes things so much worse. Now it goes from half the people worshiping this child to ALL of them. The skeptics are isolated and shunned by their peers, rumor has spread beyond the walls, devout believers are flocking the doors, and even those who don’t believe are visiting just to get a look at this “goddess”. 
Jeralt tries to set fire to the place and run away with Byleth, but there are too many people to do that now.
It gets to the point where they have to hide Byleth for the next several years in the most private and exclusive part of Garreg Mach and refuse to debut her. Seteth is brought in to help handle the overwhelming demands to see her and help run the suddenly much larger establishment.
Years pass like this, with Rhea refusing to let anyone see the “Goddess Reborn”, stating that she’s not ready.
Things get pretty cultist within the church itself, despite Seteth and Jeralt’s best attempts to stop that shit. Jeralt can’t take two steps outside without someone trying to get him to pass a prayer on to his kid.
Then, Byleth starts having the dreams. About the war, and the girl on the throne that wears the same outfit as her.
Rhea is delighted, but Jeralt can only despair.
Jeralt is out in Rumire Village, trying to solve an issue with bandits, when he meets the Lords and saves them. They recognize him, and it’s the first time in years he’s been recognized as the Blade Breaker than the Divine Father, and skepticism they all seem to have for the latter title makes him like them instantly.
He personally escorts them to the school.
When he gets there, Rhea, without his permission, decided to fucking debut his kid as the Goddess Reborn in front of the whole damn school and he may very fucking well kill everyone in this monastery out of sheer fucking frustration.
Rhea pulls him and the three little Lords aside and states she intents to have Byleth in a house of the kid’s own choosing, as a way to interact with humanity now that she was coming in to her own power. Jeralt doesn’t have to patience left not to snap at Rhea in front of the kids, especially with the way that Edelgard kid is eyeing Byleth like they’re a roach, or that Claude kid raises a skeptical eyebrow and looks at them like a lion that found it’s prey, or that Dimitri kid can only smile skeptically. He doesn’t know what the fuck is going on anymore, and Rhea should have waited for him. What is she even thinking.
It’s going to be a fight, later, but Byleth is right there, looking at the lords, and then at him, silently asking for his opinion. 
“I don’t know, pick the Blue Lions I guess, I don’t care.” Jeralt waves off, because he’s going to have a fight with Rhea when this is over, and Blue Lions seems least harmful for now.
Byleth nods silently and walks up to Dimitri, choosing to go with him to the Blue Lion house as a classmate. Dimitri, can only nod, bewildered, and try and tentatively treat her with the respect a supposed Goddess deserves. Though he, too, is skeptical of all this.
Some students already believed. Marianne approached silently, eyes tearful when she met Byleth, and Ignatz nearly dropped his paintbrush he was so eager. Mercedes takes one look at Byleth and doesn’t know whether to bow or not, or even if she should speak. She wasn’t ready for this honor. Felix only scoffs, not believing for a moment in all of this.
He’s the first person to every bluntly ask Byleth if she’s really a goddess.
“I don’t know.” Byleth replies, and that’s all she ever says on the matter. 
(It’s not a shock to her when Sothis awakens at last and she learns the truth, she’s been prepared for years).
Dimitri tries to make the other students treat Byleth normally...but it’s...difficult for them, to say the least.
It only becomes more difficult as time goes on, and Byleth pulls some impossibly impressive feats.
Still, Dimitri tries to treat her like anyone else, because he needs to, maybe, or because he doesn’t believe (or because he thinks he’s falling in love with that smile and he can’t let himself believe, or else he’ll lose her), but the evidence is mounting up higher and higher.
Until there’s a moment, where she rips a hole in the sky, that no one can reasonably deny it any longer.
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supergenial · 4 years
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Cindered Shadows was pretty decent
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I recently finished the Cindered Shadows DLC and decided to once again write about my impressions, don't worry though, this one isn't as long as the previous ones. Spoilers: I think this is as good as fire emblem is gonna get for a while.
1) No Agarthans, thank GOD
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A story as old as fire emblem: There's an interesting human villain with down to earth motivations or obsessions, but in the large scale of the story they're overshadowed by a supernatural being who wants to destroy the world for no reason other than "they're just evil". This is Edelgard and the Agarthans, Arvis and Manfroy/Loptous, Rudolph and Duma, Ashnard and Ashera, Walhart and Grima... you get it. This shit sucks to put it bluntly. Having these stereotypically evil bad guys who are clearly evil is one of the main things that brings down the plot of any fire emblem game. I'm of the belief that they should kick out these supernatural villains and just leave us against the human villains, the one's with actual ideals and beliefs other than "hurr durr, destroy the world".
And then there’s our villain for this DLC. Now yes, it feels like they recycled a certain professor from the Harry Potter series, but I like that he is "The" bad guy for the DLC, he's not being controlled by anyone. He's obsessed with Byleth's mom and in-game this makes a lot of sense. If Byleth, who is incapable of communication, can drive people crazy for them just by existing then just imagine a Byleth who can actually talk. Her "waifu" charms must be off the charts, so I can't blame this guy for being obsessed. More importantly he's not being controlled by the Agarthans, he's not being played by anyone. He's a man who's lived a righteous life, he took care of a lot of people who all love him but ultimately decided to use them for his own gain and his own obsessions. As far as FE villains go... He's good, honestly, great job Intelligent Systems, I expected a lot less.
2) Reduced avatar wanking
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Shots fucking fired
Sure, Byleth's mom is a main focus of the plot, and Byleth is the one who sets the plot in motion, but rarely does it feel like the game is going "gee Player, you're so great, you're our god, we all love you and want to marry you". Byleth still plays a large role sure (unfortunately) but it still feels like this is the story of Yuri and his gang with Byleth being their strategist which is, idk, way better than the idea behind the main game? The one where Byleth turns into a literal god, gets every achievement of the army attributed to them only, has every other conversation remind us how glorious Byleth is, etc.
In fact the dlc goes as far as having Hapi constantly belittle Byleth and even make fun of their communication skills by calling him Chatterbox (good job to the localizers, she doesn’t say this in the japanese audio). Get that teacher’s ass girl, destroy them. (Obviously I would hate this behavior if it was directed to someone else, but in this case I'm willing to make a concession).
3) Yuri's backstory
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Ashe: I admire and love this man who is my only parental figure but Rhea said he's kind of bad so I killed him Yuri: Church ordered me to kill a bunch of thieves and delinquents and I refused
You have no idea who much I love the fact that Yuri is someone who protested his orders and got kicked out of the church for refusing to kill civillians. This instantly sends him very high in my rankings. Playing through the first half of the game all I wanted was to stop and say "No, Lady Rhea, fuck you. I don't think it's very cash money for the most powerful military force in the continent to eradicate a lightly armed militia of farmers (with popular support in their locality!)" this is what true imperialism is all about! But there is sadly no option for that.
Just by telling us that Yuri is someone who was punished for saying "No, these orders are inhumane, I refuse to carry them out" that is enough for me, the game is saying "yes, we know, have your compensation price". In the end Yuri is extremely loyal to Rhea which is unfortunate but hey, at least they lampshaded one of the most glaring issues I have with the main game, so that's at least something.
4) "You've obtained all information. Proceed with the story, NOW"
Rather than wasting time forever thinking up which activity I should carry out, abyss is simply a place where you talk to the abyssal denizens to get some plot information or speculation, and boom, you're done. No running around forever, no quests, no doors that take ages to load. You can perfectly skip the abyss parts and at most you'll miss out on Edelgard's conversation with Dimiri (which is fucking hilarious) and a few rusted weapons that can be forged but that's it. Upon talking to every resident of the abyss the game will actually say you’ve acquired all information and will prompt you to go into combat rather than assume you want to dilly dally for a while.
I actually rather like this and would not be opposed to it being the philosophy behind future in-between segments between chapters. I can understand IntSys wanting to load in a ton of features like a sauna and fishing to rack up excitement for the game, I know I was excited for fishing, but when these activities have rewards tied to them, replaying becomes kind of a chore, "aw geez, I have to fish 69 fish to reach professor rank A+ AGAIN" (I actually had to when trying to get the piss screen from clearing maddening). Getting only some conversations and a bit of context for the story, that's... pretty good honestly, I liked this better than the monastery and better than My Castle. Throw in some skits with multiple characters at once and I’m gold
(seriously how come there’s no scenes with the three of the bros, Dimitri, Sylvain and Felix all hanging out together, the fact that a third character never shows up in support conversations is fucking bad)
5) Sometimes less is more
I've extensively complained about three houses already but bear with me. Yet another thing that infuriates me about the game is the extensive amount of work it required. I truly do think that if they had released only the blue lions route and left everything else in the plot as mysterious and unexplained loose ends left entirely up to speculation, that'd be a great game on it's own. Instead I have to see all the hard work that went into making the other routes only so that, in the end, they just had me going "well it was ok I guess". Every scene in the game requires work, many hours of coding, writing, voice acting, sound editing, making sure the models don't look too messed up, bug testing, etc. The amount of work that went into three houses was brutal regardless of what you think of the final product, yet a lot of people didn't even bother playing through all of that. So yes, I honestly wanted less, give me a more concise game rather than spreading too wide and ending up thin.
Cindered Shadows on the other hand is concise to a fault to make up for that. The story is pretty straightforward and leaves no loose ends to itself, there's no anime cutscenes, no supports (within abyss, you can support them all in the main game). There's even that very awkward sacrifice scene where some characters are having their life and blood drained from them yet the visual representation we see is just them standing around like normal, with Yuri even doing that hand pose he does all the time instead of squirming in pain or something. It's very awkward looking, objectively not good, but it gets the point across and doesn't make me go "wow you put in all this effort for nothing" because the whole thing is also fairly short (5 to 10 hours in hard mode).
I know, it sounds like I'm shitting on the dlc, but the point is I'd much rather get something short that leaves me satisfied than something like the main game that makes me go "this could've been so hecking gooood if they changed X" for the rest of my life.
6) The gameplay
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Chapter 4 is my favorite mission in the whole game
They made Hard Mode good. I previously said maddening was the one difficulty where this game made sense, but this one achieves perfection with just hard mode. This is because the team actually knows what you have. In the main game there's all sorts of variables to account for due to the large amount of player expression that is possible, you can reclass anyone into anything and throughout many lucky or unlucky level ups, maps can be entirely different based on that rng and choices. Here though, your characters already have solid bases starting at lvl 20, and you can't reclass too much so the devs know exactly what you're working with and can plan accordingly. Beating the maps feels incredibly satisfying not just because the objectives have more variety now, but also because you feel like you found the right way to use the tools you were given. This is why the first few chapters of any fire emblem game often feel so good, because the devs know exactly what you have.
Not that I think player expression is bad! It's very satisfying to warp skip chapters and to use broken units like battalion vantage+wrath Dimitri as these things make you feel like you've truly subjugated the game, but it takes some time for those things to really take off. There's a time to reap and a time to sow, and the sowing time can get pretty dull sometimes but that's what makes the payoff feel worth it. Still, for a short experience like cindered shadows is, this style just fits perfectly, plus chapter 4 has quickly become one of my favorite chapters in the whole game, along with chapter 6.
7) In The End
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Idk folks, I just like it. If you just want more adventures with the three lords, this is it.
If you’re looking for any excuses to avoid this I'd say the better ones are: maps are reused from the main game (they work much better here though), it's 10 hours at most so it's price-to-cash ratio isn't very good with the expansion pass being $30, and also the Abysskeeper feels a bit TOO winkwink nudgenudge to me, especially since Gatekeeper was popular enough to make it into Super Smash Brothers. Like yeah bro, we get it, we all love Gatekeeper, you didn't have to do this.
I also like that they finally gave Dimitri a semi-problematic quote where he says he kinda likes the idea of poor people living underground out of sight, I think it’s a very rich-white-boy flaw to have and not entirely awful given his life experience up to that point. And yes I do think he has no flaws and is entirely unproblematic in the main game, “feral” as he may look it doesn’t seem like he goes around killing civilians or doing anything other than busting up imperial troops which is kind of justified since they started the invasion, on top that he’s the strongest unit in the game and the most chill and honest ruler once he calms down, so little dent in his record that’s irrelevant in the large picture is indeed welcome.
Overall though, after being so massively disappointed by the Fates DLC, so much I didn't even bother with the ones for Echoes, I certainly like what I'm seeing here and that's a good sign, bravo Intsys.
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