Fire Emblem!

Spoiler: Three Houses, Beagle chapter 6 spoilers

Getting increasingly the road to hell is paved with good intention there Edelgard. I'm gonna be your bitch regardless but I worry for you and what you're going to do. Especially when she's like 'My path will be painted red, Hubert' and like 'But will I be remembered as a fool who took her revolution too far?' to Dorothea. You're growing concerning Edelgard. I'm increasingly fond of you but I've seen enough Gundams and shit to worry about shit like this.

 

I love the sheer grind potential Three Houses has. Grind potential was honestly my favorite thing about Sacred Stones. It also had some of my favorite supports and I really loved being able to branch into different units instead of the standard ones. But really I was all about that sheer grind potential. It's part of why it was the first one I ever went 'I am going to get every support on this motherfucker' for. The game had already beaten into me that replaying the fuck out of it and just refusing to play a different game was good.

AND NOW I HAVE FOUR ROUTES AND LOTS OF SUPPORTS AND EVEN MORE GRINDING. INFINITE GRIND.

In terms of difficulty it's been on the lighter side I feel like. Nothing's ever quite gotten to Radiant Dawn levels since but then again that's because they repackaged hard mode as normal mode in the west for some reason. That's fine with me though. I have made quite the jump though since like the initial chapters. I used to have to be a lot more cautious about my units and now I can just kind of toss them out there with minimal concern so long as I game the little movement prediction line things well. I'm only barely to the half way point of Edelgard's route from what I know of the route lengths...Maybe the second half will have a difficulty bump somewhere.

When it comes to story shit

Spoiler

Edelgard's being the Flame Emperor doesn't really come as a surprise at all. I'm not to the actual reveal in the route yet but the game points it out pretty fucking hard in her route. I went and checked because I've got the impulse control of a rodent and really I like spoilers and yep I was right. Granted I've been hearing that she gets up to some fucking shit so that plus the way the route goes it's not hard to pin two and two together. I mean half the other fucking antagonists seem to be secret bitches that are hiding some shit so why not the Flame Emperor too? Curious to see how the reveal will go with keeping her as the protagonist. Either way it's nice knowing that she happens to be the Flame Emperor beforehand. Keeps me more motivated.

 

I can also just toss Edelgard's stupid ass in the middle of shit. She's so fucking beefy that next to nothing can put a dent in her. And should she be inconvenienced then Linhardt is on speed dial with physic. Then once everything on the map has been pulled to her location the rest of the strike force can murder it.

 

Spoiler: three houses and edelgard

she's got horns.

i mean. it's a crown. but.

she's got horns.

 

Spoiler: Three Houses Edelgard

Honestly, even with the sort of shit Edelgard has done and continues to be up to I have to say I'm still very fond of the woman and quite invested in her. Like she's got good intentions and I can understand why she's taking the measures that she is. They're...not the best. And really it's war so like they couldn't be in the first fucking place. But they're understandable and they've got a sort of pathos to them. Like with the life she's lived and with the information she has what she's doing and how she's doing it makes sense. And while it's still kind of fucked she continues to be sympathetic. In a sort of 'I really wish we didn't have to go down this route to begin with but now that we're on it I'm going to make sure we get out the other side of it,' way.

I like Edelgard. A lot. She honestly might be my favorite lord yet. She's certainly one of the best written ones I've seen in the series. And while I do love me my Hectors and Eirikas I do have to admit that a lot of the lords are just kind of...Simple? They're just generally good people whose worst qualities are things like 'is kind of rude at times' in the narrative. And they don't tend to have like really dire as fuck consequences for their actions done during war. There's been characters like Lyn or Ike who weren't morally upstanding nobility because they dropped the noble part entirely but like Lyn's a good person. Lyn doesn't do war crimes and shit. She is never framed in a way that makes the audience go 'Hrmmmmm...That's kind of fucked up Lyn.' Her story is very positive and triumphant and such. It's not morally complicated beyond maybe her being wishy washy about the whole duty to her family thing.

This also goes a way of making my self insert character feel more...impactful too I feel like? Like I'm having to think about like...why is Uallach even siding with Edelgard? The girl lied to her and was working with someone who got her father killed. Why did she choose to defend her? And that plus Byleth's entire deal in the plot has given me things to think about ok well...how have the Black Eagles and spending a lot of time with them in particular guided Uallach's growth as a person? What sorts of lessons about being a feeling being has she learned from Edelgard? And how does that and her experiences with Edelgard inform her decision to side with her over Rhea despite everything Edelgard did?

Overall I'm really happy that they decided to go this route with the game's lords. And I'm really looking forward to getting to see the others in closer detail too.

 

PAX FE3H cosplay tally: one Edelgard, one Petra, one each of Hilda and Byleth that I didn't see but was reliably assured was around, and four unique Claudes, my god.

No BL rep ;3;

 

I saw one cosplay of a student at Dragon Con but I didn't figure out which character it was before I disappeared on my quest to get into the dealer's hall. I'm sure there were others in Three Houses cosplays there but I just didn't notice any sadly.

 

Oh. Friend saw an Edelgard at some point during it she said.

 

If I ever transition at all I might cosplay Manuela someday.

 

I am sick of all these motherfucking wyverns on this motherfucking ship.

 

I could def pull off annette, even if my hair isnt that light anymore im still obviously ginger. Granted post time skip annette would be better bc less bangs and I would only have to gel the shit outta my hair, not try the sisyphean task of keeping it straight. To bad I look terrible with white hair or u could not stop me from cosplaying lysithea.

 

My plans are 'cosplay a random student' tbh. Like not even a named one. One of the ones just named Student.

 

Spoiler: ROMANCE OF THE THREE HOUSES

So I accidentally got Dorothea's A support with Uallach because I wasn't paying attention and now I feel bad because while I like Dorothea I don't like her that way. But also now I am just thinking of how very different her A support convo is from Edelgard's. Dorothea kind of beats around the bush but in that like knowing sort of way. And she does end with 'I think I could live my life with you.' Edelgard meanwhile is...confused? She is like 'You can call me by my nickname that my COMPLETELY DEAD family called me by...' and is like 'I don't know what this is but you're like family in a way!' She's figured out that friend is an inadequate way of describing Uallach at least. But she is kind of weirded out by the fact that she's actually able to be vulnerable about her in any regard. While I am still sad that I am going to be breaking some imagine anime character's heart I am also just kind of intrigued by how very different their ways of going about A Confession Talk are. Especially in that Edelgard wasn't able to actually pin the things together completely. Which makes sense given her life and how she's lived. Same with Dorothea's way of handling things.

also it is kind of hilarious that she is going after uallach of all people because like. we're both terrible at this knowing how to person thing. i guess we can be terrible at it together.

 

The real tragedy of Three Houses is that you can't pair Hubert and Claude together. They have so much in common. Like assassination methods.

 

Spoiler: Three Houses Hubert supports

I'm honestly kind of bummed he didn't threaten to kill me in his A rank with me. You were two for two, bro! WE COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE.

 

Spoiler: haven't seen it, but...

There's always his S rank, perhaps?

 

Spoiler

I'm fucking Edelgard so he's gonna have to wait unfortunately. We have invested too much tea and too many teddy bears into this woman and are too fond of her not to pick her.

 

Spoiler: New Game Plus mini-spoiler

Luckily, you can unlock support levels in NG+, and if you save (or it autosaves) you can go watch the support even if you didn't see it, for the S-Rank ones. Otherwise seeing all of them would be... unpleasantly difficult.

 

i mean. it would. but i was honestly planning on doing that because i don't know. it's what i did the other games so why not this one too. i probably would have abused multiple save files to cheat my way through getting them because how the final marriage selection is apparently made makes that possible.

so it is kind of nice to not have to do that though part of me is also kind of sad that i don't. granted i made like lists and charts and shit to get through 100%ing the support list in sacred stones because i have endless patience for these games seemingly. there's something comforting in a way about turning off the animations, cranking that bitch up to max speed, and then blitzing through the game as fast as possible on a quest to see support conversations. at least for me.

 

god doing that for those earlier games was a thing though since supports were limited. it's why i had to make the lists at all. so i could plot out efficient ways of getting as many new ones as i could during a run.