OK, you opened this Pandora's Box: Not unless you want it to also end in wincest:
Like the real sort, not the Akiha sort.
Of course, it was Gau who opened the initial Box as it were, by saying stuff, like this:
Originally Posted by SirGauoftheSquareTable
Last edited by LegalLoliLover; January 11th, 2022 at 07:20 PM.
All this talk about Three Houses got me to finally finish Verdant Wind after stopping on chapter 19 since release week. Going for Golden Deer as my second route despite having no interest in them was a terrible decision.
Claude's ideals are good and the actual story isn't as poingnant as CF, but it's fine. I hated it anyway though, mostly because of the cast. Claude is fine but I hate Lorenz, Raphael, Ignatz and Leonie. My team ended up being basically Blue Lions + Church. Starting it after binging Crimson Flower also didn't help.
It's not like Black Eagles didn't have characters that were one-note or annoying, but the sheer amount of them in Golden Deer is crazy.
The game is still great though. I'm glad Maddening has been added for when I eventually play Azure Moon. Seeing as the Blue Lions' cast is great and, from what people say, it wasn't unfinished like Crimson Flower, so I'm looking forward to it.
Do you guys think the DLC is worth it though? I want to play with some of the DLC characters but I don't know if it's worth paying half the price of the game for it. I don't care about anything else besides the new campaign and the new units.
It's absolutely worth it. Very good 25 dollars to spend, both because of several QoL improvements, and the Ashen Wolves being great characters.
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The Deer actually has my favourite cast of all the houses. I had zero interest in most of the Black Eagles, and was 50/50 on the Lions (Felix is the GOAT but Ashe is snoozeworthy). But Lorenz is in my top 5, he's just perfect and each one of his supports is fun to read. Raphael is great too because he's one of the few people in the game who handles his issues in a healthy way without needing to be fixed by a shitty self-insert, and provides a pillar of support for others. Also Hilda is bae.
Claude himself was a major draw for me initially but yeah they're good kids and they improve so much after the timeskip. I like Byleth well enough (though maybe I just like the personality I hcd onto them) and that makes me really like Leonie too for what she represents there (plus her post timeskip look is really, really nice), Lorenz is just funny and a character growth king, and in general they just come off as a chaotic but loving family making it work somehow. I didn't care too much about the Eagles initially but they have so much interesting stuff going on that they became a firm second favorite with time, with Dorothea and Hubert as probably my second and third favorite characters.
Blue Lions don't really grip me, maybe Felix is the only one of the childhood friend gang I actually like, but on the flipside I really adore Annie and Mercedes + Dedue and Ashe are also good kids. I can't stand Slyvain though. Not that he's a bad character I would just fling him down a flight of stairs.
Personally, I love the dynamic the Lions have, and I love how they all struggle with grief, moving forward, and contextualizing both through Faerghus' toxic chivalry. It certainly helps that none of them are bad. Also, with regards to Sylvain, my only wish was to adopt him.
The Deer are nice, especially Claude, Lorenz, Marianne, Hilda, and Lysithea. Those 5 have interesting character arcs, growth, and are all pretty good units. Leonie is mixed for me, but Raphael and Ignatz just don't spark my interest and aren't very useable to make up for it.
As for the Eagles, I like 'em, with maybe the exception of El herself. They are interesting, good-looking, and useful. I also want to adopt Bernie-bear.
With regards to the Church, rarely use them as units, but they are interesting enough as characters, especially Seteth and Hanneman. Of course, I obviously find Rhea very interesting and well-done.
Finally, for Byleth, I think they have enough personality of their own, and I know this is an unpopular take. I especially like how they are defined in narrative at first by how little emotions they have, but they slowly gain more in ways that we the player can see, even if it's not obvious. It certainly helps that I code Byleth as neurodivergent, so that helps explain their oddities to me. That, abd the whole situation with Sothis is intriguing from a metaphysical perspective, and it sort of reminds me of Shiki Ryougi's deal.
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Forgot to review the Ashen Wolves. All are interesting characters, but Balthus, Constance, and Yuri are the units you actually want to invest in. Poor Hapi just cannot compete, at least in my use case.
I just dont like how Byleth supports are the only way most of the students get over their central issues. There's something in it that just disgusts me. Like c'mon, most of their supports are the student monologuing at a brick wall. Gilbert should've patched things up with Annette because of her, not because mcblandyface told him to.
As for character arcs and such, my boy Raphael is too good for 'em. He finished his angsting before the game even began.
I half agree, but I also think that Byleth works as a mediator due to having no prior history and preconceptions about the students, so they can listen better and the students are more comfortable sharing. Same goes with the adults who have unaddressed problems, though definitely to a lesser extent. Also, Annette and Gilbert reconcile almost entirely thanks to Annette. Byleth never really gets involved.
My reading of Byleth is that they're pretty much a space alien lizard person. They really can't feel emotions the way regular humans do or entirely relate to them, but that's the beauty of it: not being able to entirely understand or relate to people yet deciding protect them and be their sword despite that, a tool for people you care about to reach for power and their dreams by your own free will.
(There's also the thing with Sothis 'descending from the stars' iirc, so the Nabateans might as well be aliens, plus both Sothis and Seiros being names associated with the star Sirius for which there are irl stories in certain cultures of aliens coming to Earth from but blah blah digression)
This reading does make it extra jarring when characters refer to Byleth as an emotional support or anchor to others though. If they have anything to offer there it's their stability/constancy and lack of prejudice. Either way I wish they played up Byleth's uh, well meaning inhumanity? But I don't think what they ended up being is that bad plus I'm quite fond myself of the neurodivergent and nonbinary readings of them (here not implying neurodivergence is the 'inhumanity' I mentioned ofc).
I know in one support with Cyril you can pick a response that's along the lines of 'I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing to live for someone else' and that does feel like a sentiment Byleth might share, if you subscribe to anything going on inside their heads but elevator music that is.
You can make all the readings you want, but what's actually in the game is a mostly empty character meant to be self-inserted into. I'll take even the blandest of Kaga lords over that.
I don't think that reading has much evidence to back it up, not only because the game itself is about how Byleth's personality and emotions slowly awaken over the year as Sothis awakens and they bond with the students and faculty, culminating with the merger of Sothis' power with their body, but also because the Nabateans themselves, despite being birthed from a dragon who came from space/another dimension, are not portrayed as particularly inhuman, nor is Sothis herself. That, and their portrayal in Heroes does not support a very inhuman perspective.
I think Byleth's weirdness stems more from the very unique nature of their existence, and I think the best analog is Shiki Ryougi. Like Shiki, Byleth is basically multiple personalities/consciousness' sharing one body, and the only reason that could happen is because Byleth was stillborn, thus allowing Sothis' consciousness to sprout within them, since there wasn't a consciousness within that body yet. However, rather than completely take over their body, Sothis ended up resuscitating that body and sprouting a consciousness within it, and both the echo of Sothis and Byleth's consciousnesses ended up growing intertwined, and while Sothis slept, so did Byleth's personality, though they seemingly sleepwalked through life just fine and had a bond with Jeralt. When Sothis finally fully awakened, so did Byleth's capacity to form their personality, and the bonds they formed throughout the school year led to them gradually becoming their own person.
Speaking of Sothis, I personally think she is a First Dragon like Anankos, the Dusk Dragon, and the Dawn Dragon, or she's an Astral Dragon like the ones who helped Lilith because she shares a literal connection with Sirius. Her astralization is way too much like theirs, though the existence of a Crest Stone does change up the formula a bit.
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If that were actually true, it'd be way easier to self-insert into them.
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Also, self-inserts don't really have a presence in their 'verse all that much, but Byleth definitely does.
I literally did not claim it was backed by 'evidence', it's just my personal headcanons.
I loved Black Eagles from the start and it wasn't hard to choose them as my first house. I really love the dynamics between every character there, though I think Edelgard's relationship to her house mate pales in comparison to Claude and Dimitri. Except for her interactions with Lysithea, sorry Deers but she's ours.
Petra has the best pre-timeskip design in the game and her speech is very endearing, Hubert has supports that go from being the funniest to the most interesting in the game, Ferdinand in endearing in his confidence and obliviousness, Caspar's energy is contagious and Dorothea brings a much needed perspective to the house and enriches a lot of the scenes she's in. She also has a hat.
I don't have much to say about Linhardt and I didn't like Bernie, but even then, they still have their moments.
The Golden Deers are rough to get through though.
Raphael and Leonie are probably the most one-note characters in the entire game. Leonie has some okay supports and though I never bothered with Raphael's, his Paralogue already tells me the kind of stuff I'd see, but that just doesn't make up for their abhorrent role in the main story.
The meat stuff with Rapahel and an annoying joke, but it's insane how they insert a Jeralt commentary every single time Leonie was on screen during part one. We're all making the promise of our lives to meet up again and this girl tells me to bring my dad? C'mon.
I also never got over the Support that unlocked right after he died. Killed any good-will I still had for her.
I hate Ignatz more than both of them together though, like an unreasonable amount. I hated him even before doing Verdant Wind. I don't even have an explanation I just wish the kid would explode and die.
Lorentz supports ARE great, but that did very little to make me like him outside of them. He still felt like an annoying Ferdinand, despite having better supports than him.
I'm still at the start of Blue Lions but since I used a bunch of them already during the previous routes I already know I love them. Sylvain would probably be one of my favorites if they leaned harder on that built up anger he showed in Byleth's B Support.
Are you serious? He's a nameless husk whose only character trait is caring for the characters you're also supposed to care about. Every line they have in the story is a line you chose and they don't even have a voice.
Don't get me wrong, I actually think Byleth is an example of a self-insert done well and I enjoy being the one helping all those people fix their lives because the game placed me in the role of a teacher so I already felt like that's what I had to do. I even appreciate in-universe explanation for his blankness, but he's still Mr. User Name.
One thing that made him much better than your usual cardboard is the presence of Sothis to actually comment and react to things like a protagonist should. Not having her during the timeskip was a mistake.
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Oh I also finished the DLC so I can say the Ashen Wolves are okay. Hapi and B are too gimmicky for my taste.
They chose the perfect tropes for Constance so she's lovely and also my future wife. I'm not sure about the dual personality thing though, hopefully that doesn't really take center stage when I recruit her above ground.
Yuri is pretty but other than that there's not much going on for him.
Ultimately Byleth could've been done way better and I don't enjoy self inserts as a general rule, but the way people get super butt bothered online over them makes it darkly amusing to like them regardless. I do wish girleth was given alternative legwear options though. The stockings are cool but incredibly immersion breaking.
About that, would you prefer purely silent protagonist or a protagonist who speaks but not the exact words of the dialogue options?
The stockings look super bad in-game but I like them in the character art.
The thing I dislike about her design is the bellybutton window. It's so dumb...
Oh that too ugh. The boob window is impeccable though. So much so that boyleth should've had it too.
It looks honestly better in Heroes, the bellybutton window and the stocking filler, I mean.
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Still, I do admit that Female Byleth's default outfit is just weird in a way that doesn't vibe with the setting. The Sothis dress, on the other hand...
Unfortunately that's just how most modern RPGs treat their casts. Nobody helps themselves in Mass Effect, Persona has everyone confessing their life stories to a kid they've known for days and is possibly a murderer and Yakuza 7 needs a hobo to solve intergang disputes.
It's honestly one of the things that really drew me to Trails of Cold Steel, where the characters do whatever S-Links whether you're there or not, the only difference being you actually seeing it happen. Makes them feel way more like they have actual agency.
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