SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD






























So I didn't really do the Black Eagle route, more like Church of Seiros route? Start as Black Eagle, don't side with Edelgard. She a crazy hoe. Then again, Rhea is also a crazy hoe, but she cute as af so it's all good. Experimenting on people because you miss your mom? Eh its fiiiiine... You're cute and gay so I'll let it be.

Wait, Edelgard is also kinda cute and gay... hm...

Anywho, lets get this going. I have no idea what the other routes are like and I'm going to assume they answer some of the questions I have with the plot/lore.

The Good
 General Battle Gameplay/Feel: Get this outta the way, its still a Fire Emblem game and the tactics part of it is still top-notch. Not much else to say here. However, no weapon real triangle felt incredibly odd; I'll discuss that later down.

 MONSTERS: These were super fun and added some extra depth to combat, especially when mixed in with "normal" units. Swarming them, sending battalions in via gambits, taking down multi-health bar bigboys just felt super badass. The rather abrupt introduction/tutorial was a bit jarring, but I guess they were a little too complex/different to just throw you in and have you learn from experience without a casualty.

 GAMBITS: While I initially thought they were mostly for just monsters, it didn't take long for me to realize how absurd they can be lol. My favorite was using stride and just running through the map with my cavalry/flying brigade and have mages blow up the big boys that were left standing. Matched up with the strategy of the Church of Seiros of rushing into a crippled Empire and finishing them off before they can counterattack too, which felt extra cool. At the end of the day, Gambits added an extra thing to strategize over for every turn, especially since enemies loved them (perhaps too much, trying to hit 25-30s with em constantly...)

 CHARACTERS: Usually I don't really care for the characters/story in Fire Emblem (not that I think they're strictly bad, but usually I'm just uninterested), but something about this game really sold me on em. The obvious anime garbage bait ones I didn't really care for (lookin at you hilda), but most of the major characters all felt real to me. They all had their own motivations and goals, and while they game does its best to make it seem like the bad guys are bad depending on your route, at the end of the day they're really not that different from you.

 I liked watching the students change over the course of the game; naturally they start all bright-eyed, but when they get into real combat most of them lament over having to kill actual people, a nice touch. And while they fight for the cause and will follow you to the end, a lot seem unsure about their decisions. I also really liked seeing how the students changed over the five year time skip. I mean, they're still basically themselves, but something is just off about them after five years of war. Dorothea in particular (probably more her voice actress's work) seemed so exhausted.

Thinking back on this now, I think the pretty top tier voice actor cast is one of the reasons I was particularly drawn to the characters.

 (most of the) STORY: I kinda already touched on this above, but the fact the story doesn't really feel like "Here's the bad evil guys, go beat them up and save the world" is what makes it great. However, I got some qualms that I'll address further down.


The Meh
 THE MONASTERY: While this started out great, with parts slowly opening up and unique ways to spend time, the new stuff eventually stopped rolling in, and everything got very stale very quickly. I wish when part 2 started, there was a way to streamline monastery activities; it got incredibly annoying to have to wade through load screens as you fast traveled around to spend my 10 points of activity time lmao... No way in hell I was doing seminars or just rest cause that shit was just BAD, and dicking around in auxiliary battles gets old after a while. Anyways, this isn't in The Bad because this is a nice way to add weapon experience without grinding out battles, something that is absurdly annoying in fire emblem. Also world buliding and whatever.

 MUSIC: The battle music in this game is top notch. Every other piece of music is extremely forgettable.

 NO WEAPON TRIANGLE: While not a large issue, and this decision let them take some liberties with other design decisions, it just didn't feel like a Fire Emblem game at times when I would send my dodgy lance-based character (Ferdinand for those wondering) to fight of a bunch of warriors. I mean, there were still the x-breaker skills to create a pseudo weapon triangle, but I don't think the enemies ever had those abilities, meaning I could just do whatever broken combo I wanted to do without punishment. Worth noting that axes just suddenly became insanely good for classes that don't traditionally use them, and even worse for classes that usually do use them because of the no triangle.


The Bad
 VISUALS: Yeah this is expected. The anime cutscenes were good enough; the in-game cutscenes were very awkward, roboty, and crunchy to look at. The battle animations, while pretty cool in scale (for example, zooming in on the spot in the map you are, the battalions fighting beside you), inevitably lacked the charm and smoothness that gba animations offered.

 the other part of the STORY: So what was up with "those who slither in the dark?" They were pretty prevalent in part 1, completely disappeared for most of part 2, then they had one map at the end and that was it (with a wack choice of music). I'm just going to assume this was a route thing, since the Church of Seiros probably didn't want me to know anything about them other than They're Big Bad Evils!!! They seemed to have some complexity to em though. I'm guessing Edelgard's route will answer my questions.

 THE LAST FIGHT: I'm going to assume this felt so out of place because the game didn't know how to end with this route compared to others, but Rhea and other church soldiers just semi-randomly turning into big boy monsters and having to kill them (only for Rhea to be saved by anime magic) was a really awful way to end the game. Plus the music was terrible.

 Why didn't Petra learn how to speak properly in five fucking years??? That's not how language learning works. The quirk got very old, very quickly.




Anyways, this game is like 5/5 gameplay, 4/5 story/characters, 2/5 aesthetics.