Nintendo Direct tomorrow with Three Houses info!

[Kiran_]

6 minutes ago, UNLEASH IT said:

I usually don't complain about art and graphics,  but the eyes on these characters are extremely disturbing. 

That's so interesting because I REALLY like the eyes. On the original trailer I was like, "Ew, what is wrong?" And now I'm just fascinated by how much I like them because they're so distinct and different. And honestly if the eyes weren't as unique, the designs would be even MORE traditional anime and blending in, so I actually appreciate the difference. I was also watching Snow White with the Red Hair (anime) and their eye style was drawn differently, so I'm appreciating new, unique approaches.

Also, the thief class with the gauntlets looks SUPER cool (Jude from Tales of Xillia anyone?). So definitely gonna be making a few character proficient in that for the *aesthetic*. =P Heh.

[Lord_Grima]

Not sure how the skills will relate to the classes, but will Armored Mages be possible? That would be awesome if it could.

And prediction: Linhardt will be the most OP character ever.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Lord_Grima

[colossus86]

1 minute ago, Lord_Grima said:

Not sure how the skills will relate to the classes, but will Armored Mages be possible? That would be awesome if it could.

And prediction: Linhardt will be the most OP character ever.

Eh idk, The Reinhardt is a living legend, but Lyn is actually a very underwhelming unit in FE7

[Robert Stewart]

Interesting that Griffon riders might be seeing a return, maybe. With students being able to focus on different weapon types alongside focusing on "class" types, perhaps we'll see a greater variety of potential mounts to go along with that.

As far of the character designs, most of them are pretty bland. Probably it's a side effect of all these characters needing to fit into any class, so maybe later we'll get characters with a more standout appearance. I think Bernadetta had the most decent design of the supporting characters? No one else really stands out, at least not in a good way.

[Tactician_Iris]

It's late where I'm at but a few quick thoughts:

• Still not really feeling the art direction here - the cutscenes are lackluster when compared to Awakening and Fates. As for the characters design...I guess once we promote our units they'll look more colourful and vibrant (possibly more unique as well), but the uniforms aren't really doing much for me as is. They're not bad as such just..."meh" I guess.
• Speaking of - I'm also neutral on F!Byleth's design. It's not great but eh, it's ok. It won't deter me from pickng her at any rate. Also...did anyone else notice it said "Choose your form." when they showed the gender options? Hmm. "Form" huh..? Interesting choice of words.
• War Academy setting as a central hub of sorts in terms of plot and cast. Dunno what to think on that - it's not something that immediatly excites me nor dampers my hype so...another neutral for me I guess?
• Class promotions, weapon/class skills. Looks interesting. Plenty of customisation to be found it seems and also incentive for replayability. A positive in my book.
• Three houses with an emphasis of choosing one. Hm...how much of a choice that is and where it leads is the question.
• Hand-to-Hand combat. Oh! Cool!
• Other observations: It seems some names on the map has been changed since E3 at least if my memory isn't playing tricks on me (I've only checked the English version). At least I noticed that the change of West/East Church instead of the previous West/East Seiros. I'll have a closer look later and compare with the old map.
• Release date is delayed. Well, I strongly prefer more develop time than risking unfinished features so I'm not complaining.

 

Overall, while there's not much that has me go "Aboard the Hype Train! Wooo~!", and while the cutscene quality looks inferior to Awakening and Fates, I'm not downright disappointed either with what we were shown today. Overall neutral with slight optimism I'd say.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Tactician_Iris

[Serea-chan]

Is it me or does the dragon loli sound like Mae from SOV?

[Humanoid]

Missed the Direct because it was at like 8am and I'm not a morning person, so the only thing I've seen is the standalone trailer, which I assume is the same.

- I don't mind the avatar, and I don't mind that they're a focal point of the story. But I'd rather they didn't have some weird special powers, oh well. I do like that the avatar is not a teenager this time, or at least is someone who can pass for a twenty-something. I'd say I want a thirty-something but that might make the romances even creepier than they will already be.

- I like that it seems we'll have way more flexibility in building each character. I don't expect an FE game to ever ditch the concept of classes, but this might be the closest we can get to approximating a class-less system, which I've always preferred in RPGs. Gygax has a lot to answer for.

- I'm okay with there being no explicit big-bad, if it comes to that. Ultima 4 is one of the most iconic video games of all time precisely because it avoided the concept.

- I hope that all the shown characters being students is just an artifact of the trailer framing, and that we can recruit other, more age-appropriate characters. Like fellow academics, colleagues and the janitor.

[Ertrick36]

9 minutes ago, Tactician_Iris said:

Also...did anyone else notice it said "Choose your form." when they showed the gender options? Hmm. "Form" huh..? Interesting choice of words.

It reminded me of the beginning of Deltarune.

I'd be making jokes about that if I wasn't already on board the "educated/licensed brigand" joke train.

22 minutes ago, Lord_Grima said:

Not sure how the skills will relate to the classes, but will Armored Mages be possible? That would be awesome if it could.

And prediction: Linhardt will be the most OP character ever.

I'd be down for mage armors becoming a thing once more in mainline FE titles.  Let there be Reptor once more!

Also, your Linhardt comment.  I see what you did there.

[Alexmender]

I just got out of school and managed to watch the trailer so I'll give my thoughts inside the spoiler tag:

Spoiler

• For starters, the Tiki-expy girl (I can't remember her name right now) seems interesting but at the same time I'm not too fond on the "only the avatar can see her". This more of a wait and see before making any judgements, though.
• I'm really glad this time the continent has a name instead of Fateslandia, it's not something big but it's appreciated because it makes the world feel more real. 
• I find interesting how each of the powerhouses work. There's the empire which could be the bad guys because in FE empire=bad, the kingdom which would be the good guys and the alliance which would be Lycia with both good and bad. It's very amusing how easy it is to draw some parallels to FE7 when it comes to how each country is displayed as (Adrestian=Bern, Faerghus=Etruria+Ilya, Leicester=Lycia). Of course it may be completely different from what I'm thinking but this was the first thing that came to my mind when watching the trailer.
• Now we get into Byleth a.k.a Avatar. I'm mixed on their designs, the girl has nice hair but her clothes are...egh (shoutout to the unnecessary midriff). The guy has better clothes but I'm not a fan of his hair. They seem a bit on the edgelord side of the spectrum with all the black stuff but w/e. 
• The Avatar has a father. He gives me Greil vibes (leader of a mercenary group, yellow clothing, is well known through the land , etc, etc. I hope he doesn't share the same fate as him, though. I'd like him to be playable as some sort of Athos at the end of the game.
• So the school stuff. For some reason it screams to me "The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel", which can be a good or bad thing depending on who you ask. I don't expect this game to have the same level of politics/worldbuilding as CS but I'd be happy if it is a bit similar because I really love that saga. 
• And we get the title drop. It seems you can give some favoritism to a certain house and maybe that will change how things play out in the future? I don't know, this is another of those "too early to tell" stuff so I'll leave it at that.
• The class stuff seems like the level of customization in this game will be off the charts. Being able to make custom clases for each unit you have is going to be very interesting, not to mention it'll give tons of replay value because of how expansive it seems (watch the perfectionist guys go full FE4 because horse>everything. Personally I'd like to try a full armored run one day for the sake of it). What I find odd is if each class will have it's own clothing or if you'll be stuck with the school uniforms of each character. I hope for the latter and the Brigand Edelgard gives me some hope but I'm not sure if that's just for the "Class adquired" stuff and then they'll go back to their default clothes. Wait and hope, I guess.
• Supports confirmed. I don't think marriage and kids will be in this game but I'm positive Byleth will be able to date one of the characters and maybe play matchmaker too. This kind of stuff keeps giving me CS vibes.
• There's something that looked like Mila's turnwheel. It'll probably have a different excuse but mechanically it'll work the same. I'm ok with that, I liked the turnwheel a lot.
• So the big bad seems to be some evil church. It was for a split second but there was a guy that looked like Jedah and then there's some corrupted thing leaking dark energy. It seems they want to take down the Serios Church for whatever reason and it's up to you and the students to stop them. Either it goes up to a continental war or it stays as a small conflict ala FE7. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to dictate how it'll go depending on how much care you give to each house. After all they seem to give a lot of emphasis to the "your own journey" aspect of the game which leads me to believe this will be full of meaningful choices that will drastically alter the game's outcome. That's the optimist in me speaking, though. I know full well it can also be a linear game and the choices you have will have little impact in the story.

TL;DR: The game gives me CS and FE7 vibes, I'm ok with the character design but the visuals could use some improvement.

 

[vanguard333]

Something I just realized: we now know that Byleth's dad is a mercenary leader named Geralt of Rivia, but we still don't know anything about Byleth's mother. 

I hope that the other parents are at least mentioned. Fire Emblem seems to have a recurring writing issue with the dad dying and the mom never existing in any significant capacity. At least Ike's mother, while a posthumous character, had characterization and plot relevance. 

[colossus86]

Now that it's had some time to settle I guess I'll throw down all my major thoughts

• Absolutely nothing we've seen in terms of art direction/ascetics works for me. I hate the eyes, I hate that none of the students wear armor into combat and I don't think the cut scenes look good. That being said, The DS games look like ass and I still played them so w/e
• Some of the student designs look uncomfortably anachronistic for me. Dorothea looks like a JoJos character... and is Petra seriously wearing a Pencil Skirt in combat
• The prospect of separating weapon and move type progression sounds promising.
• The prospect of almost all of the playable characters (our students) being approximately the same age and coming from the same social background (nobility) sounds VERY unappealing, though we can't know that for sure.
• Seriously can someone who's not Byleth wear some god damn armor? Or is that going to be reserved for "armored" units exclusively
• It occurs to me that if this game has something akin to classless gameplay, or near unlimited reclass like the DS games, the choice of which house to teach could be entirely superficial from a gameplay perspective... not sure how I feel about that
• The addition of Gauntlets makes sense if there are no playable shifters in this game as a way to deal melee physical damage free of the triangle (This could also lead to a new unit type in FEH down the road)
• We're also left to wonder what impact our choice has on the playable roster of a given play through. Is there a set of characters unique to each route along with "common" characters? Or will our choice only change the order in which the students are recruited.

[Lord-Zero]

29 minutes ago, Tactician_Iris said:

Speaking of - I'm also neutral on F!Byleth's design. It's not great but eh, it's ok. It won't deter me from pickng her at any rate. Also...did anyone else notice it said "Choose your form." when they showed the gender options? Hmm. "Form" huh..? Interesting choice of words.

I just rewatched the trailer and noticed it. “Choose your form”...I guess that was thrown in to prevent “triggering” certain people. I’ll just play as the default male Byleth. 

It seems that, if the trailer is anything to go by, it’ll be 3 main routes. One for each “House”. 

[Mad_Scientist]

2 hours ago, Hunter Nightblood said:

So we're fighting the "obviously evil" church. Probably.

What's curious though is the church is the ones who run the very monastery/academy we're based at. Perhaps at some point we'll stage some sort of rebellion and kick them out, but it sounds like it's their seat of power. It's literally referred to as the "home base" of both the church and their knights. So it seems to me that barring something unexpected, if you are able to kick them out, then they're already pretty much defeated or at least have had their power shattered, so it would make them a weird choice for something you fight for a large part of the game.

 

2 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

In schools, the bad guys are usually bullies, shifty teachers, drug dealers, and the dean of the school unless it's a college.  Oh, and you can't forget about homework and student loans.

Not too strange, our planet has seven continents, if I remember correctly.

IS, maybe.

Maybe Nintendo would be okay with that in Japan as well.

But localization would probably change that because America always throws a hissy fit if you even slightly suggest that religion could have faults in a piece of media that's directed at younger audiences; they'd say you're manipulating impressionable minds.

 

The last console Fire Emblem game, for the very family focused Wii, didn't need to censor the religious aspect.

[Corrin]

My personal thoughts on the trailer

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• I am happy we have an Avatar again.

The leggings on the female are meh but the rest looks great.

Other character designs are great too.

Especially Sylvain.  He's pretty cute.

 

Some don't like how similar their outfits can be, but to me, what matters is their

personality.

A good example is Final Fantasy Type-0

Everyone had similar outfits but every single one of the 15+ playable characters had their own very unique personality and

were overall, very pleasant characters.

 

Oh and along with this, I love the art direction.

Reminds me of Persona a lot and I really love it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

•  I know everybody is hating on the new school system, calling it a Anime High School Simulator but I

like it so far.

I mean, how do people think FE characters know how to fight?
They obviously need to train somehow.

Only this time, we are in charge of their training.

I don't see why so many are despising it already.

They should at least give it a chance before dismissing it as trash.

 

The gameplay systems we have seen seem promising.

They're definitely going in on the Teacher thing, and this should expand our ability to build characters.

Like for example, it seems like simply using a Seal isn't always going to be enough to change classes.

It seems like they might have to have studied in certain areas beforehand, or else they might not "pass the test" and not be able to Class Change because of it.

Sounds really cool to me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

•  The story seems good also.

I have zero standards for story, so I know I'll be satisfied, but I can still appreciate a well written story and it seems

promising.

The Nintendo Website also said we have to choose one of these schools to teach at.

I am wondering if that'll simply change who are allies are and maybe a tiny bit of the story, or if there really is 3 completely separate routes with their own completely unique stories, with maybe a 4th, final route being

unlocked upon completion of all other routes.

 

If so, I hope one of them will be super hardcore like the Conquest Route in Fates.

If not, simply adding in a super hard Lunatic Mode should suffice.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall, I am very pleased with all the new info and footage, and I am very much looking forward to the game.

Hopefully I can get my hands on the limited edition.

:3

 

[Nora]

I'm really not sure how I feel about it being a another High (level of education not important) School JRPG...  It looks like it's going to be mostly nobles/retainer sort of characters again, and it doesn't help that most of them look so generic.  Because of the school setting, I can't see the stakes of the characters being all that high, and will probably seem really silly when it comes to saving the [world/location] from evil with what will probably be the power of friendship... and anime.

On the other end of things, the gameplay at least seems interesting, and I'm hopefully whole teaching thing and ability mechanics add onto the game rather than hinder (such as Dragon Veins).

And of course the avatar has to be a teacher...

[Captain Karnage]

I hate being that guy but am I the only person who really just dislikes the art style

I really like how the customization looks, I'm hoping we have full control on what each character will progress into.

[Guest This Guy]

Man I can't wait for Fire Emblem GX (I wish I could take credit for coming up with that, but I can't.).

 

Anyway notice how that Church Troop Is specified as 'Western Church' like there's a schism going on not unlike that between the Catholics and Orthodox churches (And later the Catholics (Again) and the Protestants.).
That or it's being absurdly literal.

[Nora]

Also, the avatar shows up in a cinematic cut scene, un-obscured by anything, and face in shot, which is really interesting.  I'm guessing that maybe you don't edit your character right away, especially given how the gender selection tells the player to "select a form", and the main character seeming to take a lethal blow.

[Mad_Scientist]

1 minute ago, Nora said:

Also, the avatar shows up in a cinematic cut scene, un-obscured by anything, and face in shot, which is really interesting.  I'm guessing that maybe you don't edit your character right away, especially given how the gender selection tells the player to "select a form", and the main character seeming to take a lethal blow.

I think most likely it's that you just have one option for male and one for women, without much if any customization, and the cutscenes will change based on that. Them only having to do two versions of each cutscene wouldn't be too unreasonable.

 

 

 

Some more general thoughts. Regarding story, it's hard to tell. The first trailer seemed focused on the wider aspects of the story, the mythology and lore, but was very vague on details. This trailer provides a bit more background on the three countries and the academy, but doesn't really even begin to approach the wider story. It's obvious that we're not just gonna be fighting brigands and stuff the whole game, so who? The church? We're sitting in the church's home base, working with them. They run the very academy we teach at. Like I said in an earlier post, yeah we could rebel, but if we succeed in immediately kicking them out, well that doesn't make them seem like much of a threat, and if we fail initially, that means WE'RE getting kicked out, which then removes the entire school setting from the game, which is obviously a big focus.

I suppose a possibility is that the church and its knights abandon the academy to take up residence elsewhere in order to do something nefarious, and then we continue to run it after they go.

The trailer (at least so far) didn't seem to indicate any sort of war or large scale conflict between the three nations either, which would be rather unusual for a Fire Emblem game. I'm curious about this then and how much the choice of house will affect the story. Perhaps it may be more like a Sacred Stones thing, where it affects what characters (at least initially) you get and gives certain unique missions, but overall you're still fighting on the same side and the branches join. As opposed to Fates, where you pick a side and end up fighting against the side you don't pick.

Still, I really have no idea what they're gonna do with the story yet.

[Acacia Sgt]

12 minutes ago, Mad_Scientist said:

What's curious though is the church is the ones who run the very monastery/academy we're based at. Perhaps at some point we'll stage some sort of rebellion and kick them out, but it sounds like it's their seat of power. It's literally referred to as the "home base" of both the church and their knights. So it seems to me that barring something unexpected, if you are able to kick them out, then they're already pretty much defeated or at least have had their power shattered, so it would make them a weird choice for something you fight for a large part of the game.

There's a chance they're not.

If you look at the map, you can see Faerghus has a place called Western Church. Leicester has an Eastern Church. So it could either be from all the same religion, or they're all different. The Church of Seiros is referred as the "main" religion, not the only one. So we might see a situation where this contient has various religions. At least one in each country plus the one in the central neutral area.

[Lyon's Dirge]

10 minutes ago, Captain Karnage said:

I hate being that guy but am I the only person who really just dislikes the art style

I really like how the customization looks, I'm hoping we have full control on what each character will progress into.

No. People have been complaining about the art style since the first reveal.

[colossus86]

2 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

There's a chance they're not.

If you look at the map, you can see Faerghus has a place called Western Church. Leicester has an Eastern Church. So it could either be from all the same religion, or they're all different. The Church of Seiros is referred as the "main" religion, not the only one. So we might see a situation where this contient has various religions. At least one in each country plus the one in the central neutral area.

It could also be a Great Schism or Reformation situation were the Church turns on its self and only one faction of the church are the "bad guys"

[Acacia Sgt]

1 minute ago, colossus86 said:

It could also be a Great Schism or Reformation situation were the Church turns on its self and only one faction of the church are the "bad guys"

That's certainly also a possibility. Wouldn't be out of place in FE, either. Reminds me of Binding Blade. The Church of Elimine is outright good and aids you, but you still end up fighting rebellious elements (like that one Bishop boss in the Western Isles, and another Bishop who sided with the Etrurian rebels at the Tower with Aureola). So it's possible.

[KMT4ever]

Huh. I certainly wasn't expecting this game to center around not!Hogwarts, but I'm actually very curious how things are going to turn out. From first impressions, all of the students can be instructed in any skill but each one has a particular track (those goals/foci we saw) that the devs expect you to send them down. I particularly like the ability to train in different movement types, although it could easily turn into Mounted Emblem again. The Noble class looks like the equivalent of Villager in that you can easily transition into a bunch of different classes. Authority looks like a stat that'll pertain to your mook squad, which itself appears to be a weapon/ability. Supports seem to be basically the same as in Fates and Awakening, no comments there. All in all, I'm looking forward to this.

I'm neutral on the art. The character portraits, at least so far, are way too small (too much face, not enough clothing) and pretty damn generic. Outfits so far appear to be mostly the school uniforms, but that bit with Edelgard the Beast tells me that non-Noble classes will be getting their own outfits as usual. Nothing really special here.

The story information was barebones as heck. We got a little information on the three major realms, plus a glance at the island nations on the fringes. There's really nothing to go off of other than that bit at the end with what looks like a typical evil cult. My first guess is that said cult is going to try to subvert/cause discord in the other factions in the name of some greater goal, presumably something to do with those giant monsters. Thus we get an excuse to go all over the place and fight all sorts of people. I'm curious, but I can't really pass judgement yet.

[Guest This Guy]

Still holding out hope for Capture Skill.

I can Be Teacher AND Big Boss.

.....I like that system, I hope it's still there.