Vorena

Flayn No matter what I do I can't seem to stop trying to get her to join.

I dunno. I think the amount of characters is fine. The extra playable are the staff. I suppose like +1/2 would not be bad post time skip, but its pretty good sized so far.

You have failed the Alois test. You are an impostor Kronya.

I'll say Edelgard's anti-church route was the hardest. The rationale being that it is the shortest route and you lose pretty much the entire teaching staff. Which I think means you cannot play with Flayn, Seteth, and Catherine who are arguably some of the better staff later in the game. I am still not sure the conditions for if people from the Church would stay with you or not. The other student you recruit could stay it seemed. The other piece being that since you have fewer months to prepare whatever build you want by about 4 chapters from 22 -> 18 it leaves less room for error. Chapter 18 is lv37 enemies there, so you should still have had plenty of time to level up and move into mastery classes if needed. However, its just a bullet point that this route leaves you with the fewest overall resources in a game that already throws mass quantities of resources at you. They are indirect hits, but I think for many people it can be an issue to help provide some extra difficulty.

I can see Blue Lions being hard to low turn count for the final chapter. However, at the same time I am not sure the condition needed for Edelgard to move from 1-30 range to 1-6 range. Eventually the siege weapon goes away. In addition, she had such low attack. 38 mt was not very high for that late into the game even on hard mode with only 77 hit and even if she could attack twice in the same turn she always targeted separate units. I have heard people say that had issues with that map, but I suppose its because it might be the only map with some odd mechanics. Otherwise, it ended up being dimitri who she has 0% hit rate against and another squishy who could always survive one attack. Granted, Falcon Knight Byleth just evades everything and can't be easily killed even against axe, bows, gauntlets, and magic.

Would not Bernadetta be above Ashe by a slight amount? Their growth rates are damn identical apart from the fact that Ashe gets 15% more luck and 5% more resistance. However, her personal skill selection is way better than Ashe's as her budding talent in riding grants her Pass and not being at full health grants an extra +5 dmg. Granted you hav to rig taking that damage at some point, but with doubling its hard to pass up free +10 damage especially early on where no unit is getting something like lancefaire, bow faire, etc. until lv 20.

Late game recruited units (Flayn, Faculty, other houses) I believe this would be difficult to do especially for any unit doing an odd route. Otherwise, any natural affinity started right at the start of the game will not have any issues really getting S rank. S+ is a different story, but at the same time there is hardly any value in going into S rank for any weapon as you get nothing from it usually. +10 crit is nothing amazing, but is helpful. +5 atk is given for free on nearly every advanced/mastered class. Its arguably better to just get to A+ to maximize hit/avoid/crit avoid, +1 mov, +30 avoid per wait, etc., then go directly into other stats such as C heavy armor, C bow, Authority, etc.

Good thing there is little need to put a male into a dark mage route beyond you want to use some of those class abilities such as poison strike.

I was surprised to find that my professor and Blue Lions lord ended up with a personal ability+ eventually at some point in the game. It added an extra effect on top of the 1.2x exp bonus they get such as Byleth gets +2 dmg in combat. Does anyone know how this is activated and if other classes get the same thing?

Abilities earned through leveling up weapon level or a mastered class stay with you regardless of class. You need to go to press X, then Inventory -> Abilities to swap out the 5 ability slots you earned for any class. There are class abilities which are only mapped to the class. Most of the mastered abilities later on are really the ones you get at like S or S+ rank. For example, a Swordmaster requires A rank swords, but class provides you a free Swordfaire and Sword Crit bonuses so you might never need to get S/S+ rank provided you never swap from that class. Finally, every unit has its own unique ability that will be there regardless of class and can never be swapped out.

I like this one. A class is so broken one cannot recommend it as the best class for a unit.

By the way, what the hell is QR?

The only thing bad about this is that in order to get that high you are stacking a fair amount of resources into a unit to achieve that. Evasion Ring, Battalion, and Dancer. Of these things honestly I feel there will be little competition for things like an evasion ring compared to some other stuff like Speed Ring, March Ring, and any perm stat items. Battalions are fairly numerous and an evasion focused one is likely uncontested as well usually. The only bad thing is dancer as that's a pretty valuable resource.

I just want to say the thought of assassins with pass, huge speed, and silver swords to be a huge pain in the butt in future. They even ignore forested terrain. Its like that fox map (lv 18?) from Fates Conquest.

Yeah, I have to say the main antagonist is whatever faction you are against. This game is very much a difference of ideals more than anything with each route to made to be sympathetic towards the side you join. Much of the drama is simply instigated by a few nefarious factions.