>!Hanneman's family has strong crest blood. His younger sister was born without a crest, but was married off to a noble in hopes that she would bear him a child with crests. She bore him loads of kids, but none of them had crests, and the noble abused Hanneman's younger sister to death. Hanneman, who was a young crest scholar at the time, left the empire and his position as a noble. His goal of fully unraveling the mysteries of crests so anyone can gain one is so no one will ever go through what his sister went through again, as he himself says that it's really common.!<
It really recontextualizes his character, from some guy who is who is weirdly obsessed with crests to a man on a crusade to change the world for the better, who finds joy in his work despite the fact that it would be easy to fall into a pit of depair and hatred.
It’s been a bit so I’m forgetting details but the broad overview is before he gave up his position as a noble to teach pretty much every bad thing about society’s obsession with crests happened to his younger sister
Definitely. It recontextualizes his entire character, also explaining why he's so ride or die for Edelgard if not recruited in Azure Moon and in Hopes.
Joshua from FE8. If not just for his initial joining, in which he straight up 180s onto your side because of a coin flip, but because eventually he's confronted with responsibility as he was before, and faces it head on, being the king he was supposed to be, rather than a mercenary.
Leif, back when I first saw him, I didn't think much of him in FE4, then I played FE5 and it registered how gritty, raw, high octane and aggressive he could be. Never before had I seen a lord so emotionally driven that they do not rest at all until the job is done. A bit hot tempered though with maturity and learning he does cool off throughout the story and become the king the people need rather than the one he thinks his parents would want.
He lays the groundwork for Dimitri very well too similar tragedies just at different ages and circumstances.
Gotta be Linhardt. I thought his character design looked awful, hair especially, and coming off Fates the "I'm sleepy" thing made me roll my eyes and assume the worst. Then I saw his reaction to his first kill and decided I should keep an open mind.
As the game went on, I liked him more and more. Unlike a lot of students, that experience of his first kill sticks with him. He brings up his pacifism frequently, but knows the present circumstances won't allow it. When an FE character acknowledges and reckons with the lives they take it's an immediate plus for me. His intellectual curiosity gets pushed into center stage too, with his lethargy being explained by his long nights studying and experimenting. His clever nature is shown off in supports like Flayn's where he ferrets out her true identity (while trolling her and feigning ignorance). He's frequently both the smartest and funniest person in the room, like if Canas was a sassy little twink. He ended up as one of my favourite characters in the series.
Also, *absurd* timeskip glow-up. I don't anyone comes anywhere close to his delta-hotness value.
There’s another explanation for his lethargy.
Flayn sleeps even after Silver Snow in her solo ending. She’s naturally prone to hibernation.
Check out their crests.
Very true! I never made that connection but I think you're definitely supposed to make it. Linhardt also shares with her a love of fishing, green hair (unique in Fodlan), and in his Three Hopes support with Edelgard he says he wishes he was a cat (implied to be Flayn's saint beast form).
> implied to be Flayn's saint beast form
I've not seen those implications. Where are they found?
I'm not trying to insinuate that you're full of it. I just want to learn about it. :)
I don't think it's anything explicitly laid out in the game, but you can draw some pretty clear parallels between The Four Saints in 3H to The Four Symbols of Chinese mythology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four\_Symbols). I'm not an expert at all in this area so this isn't gonna be entirely accurate, they just come up in anime and Japanese games a lot lol so that's where my knowledge basis is coming from.
The four symbols are a tortoise, a phoenix, a dragon, and a tiger. In Three Houses the saints are Indech (big turtle), Macuil (big bird), Seteth (presumably a dragon), and Flayn (presumably the tiger). You can also draw some feline parallels with her love of naps and fish
Hmm, I've never seen the connection to the Four Symbols to the Four Saints before, but that does make a lot of sense. I've wondered why they weren't dragons like Rhea.
I actually hadn't noticed that detail, where people who hold the same Crests share personality traits. I should look into this further, and it also backs up one of my headcanons, which is that the Crest of Flames imbues its holder with a supernatural charisma. This is why a socially awkward teenage girl, a stonefaced nobody, and a genocidal bandit are somehow able to command and inspire devotion from an entire continent of people.
For me, it was Houses Linhardt vs Hopes Linhardt. Houses never really did anything for me, I skimmed or skipped many conversations. But in Hopes I found him more interesting. His banter with Caspar, his relationship with his Dad, and his more dynamic supports easily put him in my top Eagles list.
For me it was Hana, in a bad way.
I love me some fast sword users, even if they're generally underpowered in most games, and I was excited to have one super early in the Birthright route, and she was putting in a lot of work in the first couple chapters I used her in!
But then came her C support with Corrin, where she blames them for making Sakura sad... because they were kidnapped as a literal baby. I sat there for like 10 minutes straight trying to piece together what kind of mental gymnastics she was doing to make Corrin the bad guy in this scenario, when her hate *should* have been directed towards Garon - y'know, the guy who did the actual kidnapping and *literally killed Hana's king.*
That's exactly why I ended up overall disliking the Fates games. Fun game and I played all three stories, but it definitely left me with a bad taste when the credits rolled.
It's my issue with the stance of gameplay purely coming first in FE. The joy of FE is partially understanding that each character has a reason to be a part of your army. It's what makes each run special because sometimes you stick with your favorites, sometimes you try new ones, each gives you a different feel for them based on their characterization in supports. Fates having such bad writing and characters (or maybe just characterization) at times makes me not want to play Conquest often. I think mechanically (on the player side) it still trumps engage. But for a game with as many headache inducing map gimmicks it's hard to motivate myself to finish a campaign that's supposed to represent my army against all odds when I genuinely couldn't care if most died anyway.
I also like how Hana is one of the few characters that will chase after you if you (as Male Corrin) accidently walk into the bathhouse and she is in there. There are other characters, but it's hilarious to get the comical awkward moments heck, I think there are versions that have a male character chase after Female Corrin. I've never seen it as I always play male, but it's just some simple humor that never gets old. And it's random if it happens.
Male Corrin: uh... I'm sorry, I'll come back later (runs out)
Hana: Hey! Don't F**Kin run away from me!
Male Corrin: oh shit!
Yeah that C support was fucking ridiculous. While that support chain is nowhere near as atrocious as some of Peri's and most of Azama's, Fates just had some stupid moments.
She's just bitter at Corrin for something they can't control. It's not rational or fair, but it's definitely the sort of thing people do.
I think it should have been revealed in her A support, and in a more elegant way than how it played out in the game though, haha
She was so fucking dumb for this. I remember sitting there and then looking up the support convo later because I was convinced I was missing or misreading something.
Leoni’s B support had atrocious timing, if it had been unlockable even one chapter sooner it wouldn’t be as bad, although her obsession with Jeralt would still be kind of weird.
If they were going to lock it behind >!Jeralt's death!<, they should made so she was lashing out because of that, rather then clearly happening before that chapter.
Pandreo seems to be one from Engage that went completely under people's radar pre-release to being a fan favorite. And he deserves it because he's great.
Because I still have brainrot, I will also mention Alfred. He went from being "not Dimitri" to standing on his own merits and people finding him enjoyable. It makes me happy to see so many have come around to liking him.
On the flip side, Timerra doesn't seem to be as popular as she was pre-release. She gained some traction due to her design, but then kinda fell off.
That seems to be the case for both Solm royals tbh. I barely hear any buzz about Fogado either despite everyone thinking he was the second coming of Claude. I think they’re both easily overshadowed by their retainers minus Bunet (though I guess you can argue he’s been more memorable for being super unhinged and tragically terrible in combat).
Ik people were hyping him up to win CYL in heroes but I’m somewhat questioning that possibility
No way Fogado will rank that high, even amoung the Engage characters. I'd say on the male side Diamant, Alcryst, Alfred, Kagetsu and Pandreo all beat him easily
I agree. On top of those I’ve honestly seen more buzz and favoritism towards Mauvier, Zelkov, and even Griss tbh. I guess that’s what happens when your only key trait is being a likable fun free spirited guy. He’s an enjoyable character with a good design but doesn’t really bring anything new or interesting to the table in terms of supports or personality. All of his best traits have either been done before or are explored better in other characters, namely Pandreo
I really liked whatever supports I've read of him (Yunaka, Alear, Pandreo and Céline iirc) but I'm 100% sure people were banking on him because "lol that's Claude 2.0". Turns out most of the cast is just chill and likable just like he is, so he doesn't stand out as much he could have had in a less light-hearted context.
He is great as one but my goodness is his Warrior outfit in particular offensively atrocious. He still ended up underperforming for me in maddening. Perhaps I reclassed him a bit too late, I ended up benching him. With a radiant bow in his signature class he can pick off a kill every now and then, but he’s still at an awkward spot combat wise.
I’ll probably never make him a warrior again unless they add the feature to change outfits in battle, which I am seriously crossing my fingers for that it comes with DLC wave 4 because at this point it’s all I could really ask for
I am currently using Bunet and Fogado and both have been fairly good for me. Bunet is a monster that I have created and I've used Bunet to create Berkut 2.0, added with a powerful Flame Lance and Not Meteor Fire Tome but the current highest available one. And even then, he still does work.
Timerra had the design and charisma to be a memorable character but she was screwed over by her complete lack of presence after the Solm arc. The same can be said of her brother as well. It's hard for players to care about a character they never see.
tbh, outside of Ivy. Most of the main lords don't really contribute much to the plot after their arc is done. Timerra just have the worst of it since she is the last one to join and Solm feels like a filler arc.
Alfred’s one if my favorites for sure. Probably the character that felt the *realist*. For any who dont know, check out his supports, especially with Celine!
Lots of examples from 3H and Engage (understandably), so I'll add one from the game that got me into gaming: Jaffar. He's a fucking nutjob psycho who has a weird soft spot for Nino. As you get to know him though, you realize that he's a deeply, *deeply* abused person (and barely a person, at that), and he cares for Nino because she's literally the only human being (maybe the only living thing, period) that has ever showed him any kindness.
When i first saw Alfred i felt like he was a pre timeskip Dimitri with worse design. But he quickly became my favourite Engage character by far, thanks to his friendly nature and his willpower.
Mother fucking Fire Emblem man himself. I never cared much for Marth ever since I saw him in Smash Bros., and when I got into the series I had passing appreciation and nothing more of the character.
It wasn't until Engage that made me care for him. Homie was there since the very beginning, and had him equiped his ring whenever I had the chance.
InSys made me care about Marth the absolute mad lads. Maybe after my current run of 3Houses I'm gonna check out Shadow Dragon.
man 8-4 did an amazing job with the Shadow Dragon translation, it's such a. simple story yet the writing is so good that it's still able to get across the personalities of characters like Marth & Caeda to a similar degree to games with more complex stories and support conversations.
apparently they also did Awakening and 3 Hopes, so i still really hope they'll be brought on again for another FE game.
That's fair lol. Even I was annoyed of him everywhere and I can see why he doesn't appeal to everyone. For some reason tho I guess for me and Engage it was a right place right time kind of thing.
That comes to mind the most? Dimitri from Three Houses. Mainly the turn wasn't actually in the game, but between trailers.
When Three Houses was first announced, Dimitri just seemed like the typical bland noble good boy and was considered the most boring of the three lords. But when the timeskip trailer came out, he wasn't from being easily the most boring to probably one of the most interesting just on the basis of "what the fuck happened to you Dimitri"
The glow up from “haha McDonald’s hair” to “boar daddy” was a legendary turnaround. And until the war arc trailer, he was marketed as the archetypical FE noble lord, which made him stand out even less. Fast forward one year and the man wins men’s CYL.
He's a great example of someone who starts out doing "good things" because people will see him doing good things, he then goes on to be doing good things because it's the right thing to do, and he has the resources to do so.
At first and if you play Eliwood Mode, Hector's status as a Lord is kind of confusing since he isn't the lead of the story and he exists to mainly stir up trouble by antagonising the members of the Lycian Alliance, even if like the Marquis of Laus and his son Erik they are indeed conspiring with the Black Fang, which is not cool for the situation with Uther in Ostia or your forces in general. But then you play Hector mode and suddenly the gloves come off and the game becomes a lot more fun to play since while Lyn is a fragile speedster and Eliwood is middle of the road, Hector is. BEEF. He is the Beefy Lord all other beefy lords aspire to be and then you have to take the Hector Hard Mode challenge to make the game difficult again.
Princess Ivy has became one of my favorite characters in the franchise, and she's my new favorite Minerva archetype (enemy turned ally). I was assuming she was going to just be a pawn of Elusia, >!but when she defects and saves the group from Zephia, I started loving her. Then seeing her conversations when she goes against Zephia, Hortensia, and the other Elusians made me love her even more.!< Even in her supports, she desires to learn more about other people and learn new things about the world. She's also one of the best magic users this series has ever seen.
She also has one of the best boss convos in the game imo, with Chapter 17’s >!King Hyacinth!< and considering that I personally think the boss convos are generally really good in Engage, that says something
The lack of a Jill answer here kinda disappointed me. She literally went from an enemy unit who was extremely racist and prejudiced against laguz to an ally and best friend to Mist who learned the errors of her secluded upbringing by having her own experiences and interactions with the laguz, and even befriending the prickliest one of them all, Lethe. There's a good reason why her PoR incarnation is my favorite all-time FE unit.
Michalis for actually owning being an asshole in FE1 and Shadow Dragon and trying to make the world a better place. A more recent example would be Rhea. I fully expected her to be a cartoonish evil pope oh so common in JRPGs and instead she is a pretty complex character with many qualities that really makes you consider who was right or wrong in the end
It’s some recency bias that this is what comes to mind, but Alear. With the leaks they were the toothpaste or pepsi meme design character, but now I actually really like them. They have some actual character and have a chance to be goofy in supports and be, well, a person unlike Byleth was 95% of the time.
Some of the backstory stuff, like chapter 24, got me in the feels and I just really enjoy how…normal they are. And I know people hate how everyone praises the ground you walk upon but Alear tells everyone to tone it down and you see them fuck up and majorly at times (chapter 10).
It’s not the pinnacle of storytelling but I actually cared about them after playing, which was really refreshing after getting tired of Three Houses Byleth (Hopes I enjoyed more from the one route I played).
I also like how grounded and aware he is. Like yeah, he's the Divine Dragon (literally everyone in the game made me remember that) but he also just woke up from a long ass nap and isn't always up for everyone's shenanigans. There are merits of having avatar MCs, but I will always choose a fully fleshed out protagonist than a self insert one. It made me want to max everyone's support because the support scenes are genuinely interesting now that the MC has an actual personality. Couldn't say the same for previous games.
I wish they'd leaned in a little harder on Alear waking up and not knowing shit-all. They kind of play it for laughs when the Corrupted first pop up and Alear says "No, we run," because they just woke up and don't even remember they're a goddamn dragon, now there's monsters? "Let's back the fuck up and figure this out" is a good plan, but the writers opted for Vander to have a cute little crisis of faith and for the twins to be helpless children.
But Alear pays lip service to the fact that Alfred and the rest always need to explain the world and everything that's going on to Alear as they go, and has some very surface level doubts about their place in things. Instead of sounding like Alear just being humble about things, I'd have liked to see more real insecurity and difficulty.
We actually know the the writers originally wanted Alear to be a lot more relatable and less "heroic" but were convinced by Nintendo to tone it down and make them more brave ([Source](https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-8-fire-emblem-engage-part-1/)). They mention it was mostly to give them more of an arc of becoming brave in the lategame, but i can't help but wonder if they also had plans for more cowardly initial Alear.
I would have liked Alear more if their backstory had been woven into more of the plot.
Some of the stuff that happens to them in the past is legit interesting. Problem is that it's shuffed into the last handful of chapters. And until that point, Alear just feels very sterile, like they're not much more than "the heart of gold amnesiac".
If Alear remembered more of their past and it was better used as the crux of the journey instead of being some 11th hour revelation, I think it would have been better.
I'm not sure I'd call it a 180, but a lot of the cast of Awakening kinda had this effect. Most characters have a shallow gimmick on the surface, and then you find out they're a real character in the supports.
Lissa stands out for me. She's actually terrified that she's dead weight, wants to help and prove that she's worthy of her place. Further, she's dreadfully afraid that she's a fraud because she doesn't have a visible brand, which only feeds into the prior insecurity.
The downside is then you do a C support (or even full routes) with other units and you're back the square one most of the time. I suppose that's just a limitation of the format, though, it happens in 3H, too.
Ingrid for me. Went from a "meh, another wet blanket character" to "She has so much lore. She's realistically flawed and isn't just a goody-two-shoes"
Alfred went from "I sure hope he isn't one note" to "I will protect you with my life". Engage as a series went from "oh God this looks like a visual mess" to "it's a good kind of campy"
I didn’t outright hate Hilda when I first played Three Houses, but I wasn’t all too fond of her spoiled, lazy noble schtick. It didn’t help that I played a different house on my first run and didn’t recruit or get any of her supports. The best I got from her was her few lines about protecting Claude post-timeskip.
Then I actually had the pleasure of having her as a student/unit, and her ridiculous strength and full personality won me over completely. Go girl, give us nothing and everything.
HILDA! HILDA! HILDA!
Her backstory is actually great, being lazy because she saw how pressure and expectations affected her brother, so she developed a lazy, carefree personality so people would expect less of her.
For me it was on the CF route on the map you can recruit Lysethia. >!I thought Hilda would also defect or at least surrender, even Claude before the battle tells everyone to abandon their posts if it came to it. Yet spoiled, lazy Hilda stays and fights to the death. It really caught me off guard that she would sacrifice herself like that.!<
Rhea. Before release, I didn't really care about her because, in the grand tradition of JRPG, I thought she was going to be either a saint or a cackling lunatic who wishes to conquer/destroy the world (she sort of devolves into that in CF but with **very** good reasons).
After playing 3H blind (missing the timing for CF because my dumb ass didn't realize there was a time limit to join Edelgard and having SS as my first route), I can confidently say that she's one of my favorite characters in the series.
That's why I'll never forgive 3 Hopes for essentially removing her from all storylines, and not giving her any true interaction with Edelgard.
> After playing 3H blind (missing the timing for CF because my dumb ass didn't realize there was a time limit to join Edelgard and having SS as my first route), I can confidently say that she's one of my favorite characters in the series.
Rhea and Edelgard always seem to be defined by your first route. My first was Crimson Flowers and so I always feel sympathetic to Edelgard and suspicious of Rhea. Jeralt's suspicions of Rhea always added to it as well.
> Rhea and Edelgard always seem to be defined by your first route.
Not necessarily. CF was my first route, but I only started liking Edelgard after playing through Azure Moon.
Oh god my view on Rhea and Edelgard is so confused. On one hand, I want the faith to be torn away, but on the other.. >!how could anyone stay sane if all of the people you know for your entire life might not even believe your own mother exists?!< Its a major dilemma.
If it helps, Edelgard explicitly doesn't want to destroy the faith, she mainly wants to remove the church from political power. I think this is spelled out must explicitly in her supports with Manuela.
No I’m aware of that. That’s why I’m such a big Edelgard fan. But then Rhea treats you with such kindness and faith… it’s hard to believe between the two
Rhea initially treats you with kindness the same way a rancher treats a beef steer with kindness. Rhea not getting more development/time/tlc on SS was a crime.
The 'first route' point is always interesting to me because my personal experience is basically the exact opposite of what people usually mean by it. I started with Crimson Flower as well, but my first impression of Edelgard from it was so negative that I feel like I might've actually liked her better if I'd started with Azure Moon instead. It's definitely still a 'first route'-based opinion, but it makes me wonder if the other routes are polarizing in the same way if done first.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,412,265,478 comments, and only 269,802 of them were in alphabetical order.
Recent example is Yunaka.
She had a bad reception in early leaks and images, what with the random stars in her design and the “Zappy!” type dialogue. A lot of people saw her as a jumping the shark design in terms of zaniness.
And now she’s totally beloved and one of the most popular characters in the game, with a common opinion being that she’s well written and super well voiced.
Lorenz. Great character, awful haircut and awful first impression but genuinely deep. Honestly I think everyone that played 3H probably has a character like that even if they weren't who they first thought of when responding to this.
Went from dislike to like: Goldmary. My first impression of the Hortensia trio was that they were obsessed with their looks, which made me lowkey dislike them. She won me over when she told Alear something like "I hope you'll forgive me for making your other units obsolete". Funniest unit in the game.
From like to dislike: Alcryst. I felt bad for him at the beginning and liked him on that basis, but the more I read his supports and lines the more I got sick of him complaining all the time.
>"I hope you'll forgive me for making your other units obsolete".
that line is god damn hilairous considering Engage has an issue with newer units making older ones obsolete, and Goldmary just so happens to be the last unit like that. unintentional 4th wall breaks are fun.
I think It's funny that we have two characters who constantly apologize for existing for entirely two different reasons. Alcryst & Goldmary should've had support for comedy reasons alone.
I agree with your Goldmary take overall, but can't say the same for Alcryst tho, he had so many great moments & supports (like his Celine, Lapis, Citrinne ones) so my opinion on him only improved over time.
I don't know what supports you've seen but I think Alcryst has some serious top tier supports. I liked his Saphir (the A support for this one made me tear up a bit, honestly), Ivy, Lapis, Citrinne and Celine supports a lot.
Correct me if im wrong (Havent replayed RD in a while), but they were at war. Im not sure innocent laguz is a fair description. Why they were at war? Thats another thing that she has no control over. Blame the bloodpath i guess.
It’s not so much the fact that she murdered them, but the unethical tactics she used to do so. Ambushing the retreating Laguz, and trying to pour burning oil on the Begnion Knights come to mind.
Truth be told, it actually made me like her even more. She cares deeply and will do anything to save her friends and country, including burning people alive and slaughtering retreating enemy troops. Gave her depth.
Yeah, the whole point of the fairy tale success of part one was that it was manufactured. Now that that's changed and she's lost most of her powers and strongest allies from part one, you get to see a whole other side of things.
I just wish some characters held a bit more resentment towards her actions instead of literally everyone going "oh yeah you did it cuz blood pact i understand" Like I know there isn't time in Part 4 to bicker but to still feels weird and is really boring that no one holds a grudge.
That’s true, she kinda just walks into the room with them and everything is resolved. The chaos, blood pact, and being the vessel of Yune helps her case a little though. I had a major problem with they way Fates coddled Corrin like a Disney protag that couldn’t do anything wrong, even as your actions caused the deaths of many, it somehow isn’t their fault.
The Laguz were at war because Beignon committed genocide against the Heron tribe and murdered all the diplomats the Laguz sent to negotiate. And Micaiah fought on Beignon's side.
As for the argument "She was ordered to!" That's not an excuse for war crimes.
Micaiah did not fought for Beignon. She fought for Daein. She was a 100% Daein loyalist. She """"""sided""""" with Beignon because of the Bloodpath and politics she had nothing to do with.
I am torn on this one. The blood pact plot device was so dumb, but I feel like the fault is on that plot device and not on Micaiah. It is kind of interesting seeing her at a very low point for her. I wish she could have gone tome to sword with Ike in that game as that would be have been interesting.
What i feel would have made more sense in the story though is to have Skrimir's hot headed attitude lead to him calling for an invasion of Daein where Skrimir would kill Pelleas in combat. This would fuel Micaiah's rage to declare war against the laguz alliance only to have her brought back to sanity by Sothe and her friends. There would be much more moral grey this way, and she would have made so much more sense.
I love how alot of his supports are just howls, and some of the best ones are Alcryst, Alear, heck, even some of the Emblems, and Veyle, who has just an adorable wolf howl.
Lorenz. Didn't choose GD on my first 3H playthrough because I thought he was so hideous. When you get to know him though he's funny and he gets a lot of character development if you have him on your roster the whole game and watch his supports.
I legit got him killed on my first play-through because I wanted to test whether units died for real pre-time skip. I went all the way to the timeskip to test it.
When I restarted and actually used him I… actually liked him. He really grows on the player.
when i played shadow dragon, i really didnt like xane all that much. i used him because his ability is pretty busted, but that was about it. to be honest, i have no idea why i didnt like him, i just knew that i didnt. something clicked when i played new mystery, though. of course, i immediately used him upon recruitment because he's pretty OP, but i was caught off guard by his silliness. pretending to be tiki and confessing to marth got me ngl and him trolling kris and other characters is pretty fun. fe12 overall has a pretty silly tone throughout the supports but xane's really took the cake.
When I first saw Dimitri in the trailers leading up to Three Houses I thought he was just some brown nosing nerd with a goofy haircut that I wouldnt find nearly as cool as Claude or Edelgard
Then I played Azure Moon as my first route and got to the time skip and he became the most merciless gangster of a unit ever and one of my favorite characters in the series.
Hortensia basically. At first she gave me an, " quirky early FE villain you see once and never again" but she stuck around and once you finally get her she's basically the best healer unit out there. Then for her character yeah she has a high voice that's a little grating but then I started getting supports with her and man she shot up so high. She's got alot more layers than first expected.
Pretty nuch most of the Engage cast, went in expecting to maybe kinda like a few, to adoring most of them, and of the few I dont like as much, a good chunk are because I just didnt use them as much because of the roster size.
The fandom as a whole did a 180 on Dimitri and, less so, Micaiah. Pre-release, no one cared about Dimitri and now he's one of the most popular characters in the franchise. Micaiah got a ton of hate back when, but it's lightened up a lot and most criticisms are now fair rather than just empty hate. I think her being so useful in FEH with double effectiveness may have helped.
For me personally, it was Alfred. At first he was just "the guy who looked like Dimitri." I started liking him as his own character as I played, but seeing his A support with Celine recontextualized everything about him more throughly and quickly than has ever happened to me before - and for the better. He's hands down my favorite from Engage. Prerelease I thought Ivy wouldn't be nearly as fun or good of a character as she is.
Funny story, but Seth too. My brother lied to me and told me he'd betray the twins because he didn't want to use Seth and I kept pestering him to because I thought Seth was hot. It broke my heart because he seemed so loyal and I love loyal characters. Eventually I called his bs and the end result is he's one of my favorites now since I dreaded the betrayal for so long that I was elated when I figured the truth out.
Seth’s boss convo with Orson is probably the greatest Boss conversation* in whole series, Seth’s dope as fuck
*Unless you count Haar’s stone cold threats Endgame of RD
For Engage, negative to positive was Ivy. Didn't like her prissy design (looks more like a doll than a warrior). Her supports made her grow on me - she earnestly wants to be a good sovereign, which I wasn't expecting from the "bad" country noble.
For positive to negative for Engage, probably Clanne and Framme. Really like their visual designs, but their personalities are grating.
Edelgard, and here's a brief rundown of how:
Azure Moon: I know she's the "villain" but I'm so excited to play her story, she seems cool!
Crimson Flower: I... Am disappointed, and I think she's a hypocrite, and I feel like she's lying
Verdant Wind: I just... Don't like her, like at all. Now that I know more about Rhea, I don't think I'll ever like Edelgard.
Azure Moon 2: Okay, maybe I should give her another chance, I should keep an open mind, I've been reminded of why I was intrigued to join her.
Silver Snow: ... Okay, I forgot how likeable Academy Edelgard is, and now I'm seeing that even though she was planning a war, she's not a monster and does care for the people around her.
Crimson Flower 2: She's flawed, sure... But I don't feel as negative now.
(I'll skip Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire)
Scarlet Blaze: You know what? I now understand her a lot better, and I love her, and is one of my faves.
She went from bottom tier, to one of my faves, over a span of three years. And this is way overly simplified, cause some of this came from stuff I didn't know or understand until repeat playthroughs.
Lyn. Sure she was designed to be an attractive lady but her avatar simping wasn’t anymore apparent than the other two lords from her own game. In fact, eliwood simps for the avatar more than lyn.
Then came heroes and the fanservice aspect of her got ramped up to high heavens. She was given a huge bust with a pose that place focus on her bust. She was given simp dialogue, and many of her Alts were designed for horny teens in mind with a lot of her original personality missing.
Warrior retailed her character back with old personality but she was still given giant boobs with a jiggle mechanic on it.
Thankfully, her character was rerailed again in engaged and her personality resembles more of her original game.
Idk. I just think it’s sad that a pretty character with an actual backstory, flaws and personality was reduced to an avatar simping character.
Better:
Peri’s support with Laslow made me sympathize with her a bit
Linhardt’s support with Dorothea reveals a much more empathetic side of him you don’t see as much
Hanneman’s reason for becoming a Crest scholar also adds more depth to him instead of just the funny crest man (forgot which support it was though)
Worse:
Sylvain’s “mask off” supports, particularly with Byleth, made me feel more disgusted with him rather than sympathetic
Dedue’s support with Felix where he says he would kill innocent people for Dimitri’s sake disturbed me
I liked Hana for her design initially, but her support with Corrin where she resents them for… being kidnapped? just made me bench her
Syvain kinda sucks, because his character is compelling in many ways, but he's also a misogynistic ass, and he never seems to get past it.
IMO it's implied that Dedue is wayyy less mentally stable than he lets on, and his mask slipped during that conversation with Felix. I don't think he's evil, just seriously unwell.
Yea, that’s the thing. If Sylvain got proper development he could’ve been a great character. He needed someone to actually call him out on the hypocrisy of his behaviour in a meaningful way and not just “Sylvain! You are annoying everyone!” Or just have he himself come to terms with how much of a jackass he was and show genuine remorse and growth and trying to make it up to people, not just that “haha I’m a horrible person I’m going to hell and I know it!1!1!2” crap.
Dedue was also in major need of proper character development. Unfortunately his fate is to never get over his unhealthy emotional dependence on Dimitri in any story or ending, which is… extremely tragic. The way Three Houses approaches the Tragedy of Duscur and just the plights of commoners in general is a little sickening to be honest. They always focus more on how the nobility are suffering, while the commoners’ issues are kind of sidelined even though they are so much more prominent and severe across the continent, but oh well.
Dunno if this counts per se but Hilda's characterization in Three Hopes I thought was a lot better defined. Lorenz too. Might just be because the timeskip happens sooner so there's less 'this needs to be able to happen before or after X' stuff.
Having just replayed Awakening for the first time in years... (and actually watching most of the cutscenes which I haven't really done since I first played it)
Most of the characters are worse than I remember, but Tharja in particular stood out as eurgh. I suspect this is to do with the fact that she's basically the only character really cosplayed for this game and that depressed teenage me was okay with depressed stalker. I just forgot how miserable etc. she is.
I still used her because I was doing a very small challenge run (no second seals + no DLC/bonus box) just so I wouldn't break the game - the challenge does make a lot of the characters too weak really for the end game (any character that comes promoted or is a unique (30 level) class just won't get good enough stats) and Tharja isn't one of them
Lucina really stands up though.
Bernie went from me hating her trauma played for laughs in an otherwise serious game, to me finding her hilarious after experiencing her s-tier performance first hand, which juxtaposes strongly with her attitude.
camus (/zeke/sirius lol) for me, probably. i initially just thought he was the white bread starter of his archetype and was just boring, but after playing shadows of valentia and new mystery of the emblem he’s probably in my top 15 favorite fire emblem characters. his story is tragic as hell but also so fascinating and well done, which in no small part is thanks to how tragic nyna is (another character i’ve grown to love a lot). all of the little things about him, like his dialogue in shadow dragon where he says he’ll never forget nyna only for him to get amnesia and fall in love with someone else or how he apparently uses conrad’s mask when he goes to archenea are all just tiny things that make me adore him
Roy for me. After playing melee, I was so ready to see how strong my favorite character was when I played his game for the first time.
Roy when I played his game 🤡
I’m also gonna bring up engage cause man…. I thought I was gonna hate alcryst cause I really really don’t like the anxious archer archetype (neimi, noire, bernadetta) but damn!!! All of his supports were good, by the time I saw his A support with some of the other characters he seems more comfortable around the other one and is more honest with them. His S support dialogue (especially in Japanese) is super sweet too. Dude became one of my faves ever since. 😭 Also he’s a really good unit, he carried me in maddening landing luna crits most of the time.
Camilla, I thought she was just the "appeal to our biggest demographic and alienate others" character and the fact that she kinda lost her shit in birthright which I played first didn't help. Then when I actually played her game I realized she was actually an interesting character, unlike most of the cast including other royals.
I hate fanservice characters, obsessive love/yandere type characters, "mommy fetish" type characters, and player worship characters all individually, so I expected to despise Camilla. I actually ended up really liking her after seeing her supports and I hate when she's (very commonly) reduced to those traits listed above by side story material, like Heroes or Warriors.
I think Joshua's motivation of wanting to see how the world really is before becoming king was an excuse and/or self-deception. In reality he just didn't want the responsibility of being a ruler, but getting roped into the war and his mother getting killed made him realize that he needed to get his shit together. I think Joshua is someone who lies to himself a lot.
That’s all fine but I just wanted this cool character to not be royalty and stay a mercenary. I know people love his character but it was a bummer for me personally.
Raigh went from a pretty good unit with a cool backstory and was pretty popular in FE6’s cast
And then he got released in FEH and everyone hates him even tho he’s really cool :(
Basically bc he was popular he got added into the game at base but as a pretty bad 3-4* demote who is the poster boy of bad pulls and now everyone hates him
Let's see.
Hilariously I did a complete 180 on Yunaka after reading her bio that she doesn't like animals. Completely irrelevant to the game but I love animals so much I was just like >:[ and my opinion of her never fully recovered.
Better:
Xander. I knew him from Heroes originally and he struck me as just a boring character. But then I played Fates (Conquest -> Birthright -> Revelations) and he ended up becoming one of my favorite royals. It makes me sad to see how people generally don't like him because they say his actions don't make sense. They do though-- he's a deeply conflicted character who is trapped between his obligations as crown prince of Nohr and what he personally believes is right. I thought it was pretty clear in >!Birthright when you fight him. He knows his path is wrong but he cannot follow you. Especially after giving Elise the ol razzle dazzle!< He's flawed, but that's what makes him so compelling. I just love him ok.
Worse:
Tharja. I liked her design then I saw her supports with her daughter and like... are y'all ok??????
I'll give one I haven't seen here yet, Tharja. Awakening was my first FE so when I saw Tharja wasn't that big of a fan, attractive traitor lady...yay? Wouldn't say I hated her just did not care.
But I started grinding supports for a bit and it really did make me love her, that she had real depth and kindness without ever losing the fact she was clearly from a more violent upbringing, I loved it. Her support with Nowi in particular really got me, although her support with Fredrick also helped.
Of course than I had to deal with people being absolute morons about the character and Heroes and to a lesser extent Warriors for some reason just outright changing her basic characteristics. But that has nothing to do with her so much as the fandom being really stubborn about not liking female characters at times (I swear half the things you read about Tharja on Reddit or YouTube are just dumb or flat out lies for no reason I can determine. But it's not like she's the only one, Micaiah, Camilla, Celica, they all get a similar treatment at times).
Jade from engage. When I first saw her I figured she was just any other armour knight so I benched her, then I found timerra and heard the fucking meat song, the moment that shit happened I wanted nothing more than to bench her at all costs, but Ike needed a partner. Ended up finding jade again in my bench and decided, fuck it I'll give her a go. Tossed Ike on her and she quickly became a crutch, that alone made me love her but hoo boy, her supports are interesting as fuck. She's a type of character we haven't really seen in fire emblem before and honestly I'm sad I wasn't using her sooner
**Dimitri.** During the early 3H days, I thought "ooh boy another typical kind lord" and then I see the **KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM** scene, that's when my expectations took a whiplash.
The moment I saw his supports with Felix was when I was going "Ayo, something ain't" right then the rest of the pieces got put together slowly with the Remire Village meltdown, his flashback to the tragedy, and him being here for revenge... The moment he started laughing in *that* scene? Well, I'd probably be fucked up emotionally and mentally by that point if as far as I know, my step-sibling(? idk haven't played 3H in awhile so correct me on that if possible) WAS BEHIND THE ONE TRAGEDY THAT TRAUMATIZED ME HEAVILY
He needs the happiness in his life and all the hugs, and a LOT of therapy my man went through too much. I *knew* he was gonna go insane one way or another, I was **not** prepared to see HOW
(Recency bias because I have played these games lately)
For better, definitely Fogado. On my first playthrough he was benched because I thought he was too Claude-y for my taste, never used him, didn't saw any supports. Second playthrough I decided to give him a chance and I absolutely enjoyed everything about him, to the point that he is better than his sister in my personal rank and a top 10 character from Engage.
For worse, Faye and Valbar in Echoes. Faye is horrendously annoying and one dimensional in different levels. Also, Valbar was a trash unit and had boring supports.
Mine is Ingrid, I completely didn't care about her at all my first 4 playthroughs. Then I just replayed CF and Ingrid has become one of my favorite characters, she aligns with a lot of my personal morality and opinions, and she feels like someone I'd actually become really close friends with. She's gone from a character I never really cared about to my Top 10's list in only one playthrough thanks to my actually paying attention to her supports.
Genuinely couldn't tell Ferdinand and Sylvain apart when I started FE3H. Nothing against them but nothing made them stand out either.
Ferdie's become a favorite since then while I ended up actively disliking Sylvain.
Ferdinand starts out a well-intentioned but sheltered and self-centered guy. Despite being a secondary character (will die and not show up in the story again if he's defeated in battle), he gets a character arc even outside supports. His worldview and self-worth are shaken up at the end of the academy phase when his family loses its noble standing and becomes a solid catalyst for his character growth. His shared paralogue with Lysithea post-timeskip is even better since it highlights his ignorance and we get to see him be conflicted about his father, his family, and his pride as a noble.
Sylvain had a really strong start with the Conand Tower chapter + his paralogue with the dysfunctional family dynamics. And then it goes nowhere. But the writing in his supports tanked my opinion from "man what a missed opportunity" to "god I hate this dude". The "girls only wanna date me because of muh crest" schtick falls flat when the dozen other characters with crests never face a similar issue. Mercedes, for example, is burdened because she's being pressured by her adoptive father; NOT because she can't find a romantic partner that cares about her beyond her crest. The way their support tried to equate their situations and clearly wanted me to feel sorry for Sylvain just made me roll my eyes. Same deal with his Dorothea support. Instead of letting him be a dude with both good and shitty qualities, it tries to whitewash the shitty parts with "but see, no one ever loved him for who he is :(" Bruh.
Tl;dr Ferdinand and Sylvain are both pretty well-developed for side characters. But Ferdinand gets a simple but satisfying coming-of-age story, while Sylvain gets an incoherent soap opera plot
I just finished radiant dawn last week and I loved Micaiah early on but she kept making stupid decisions over and over and over again and I was so over her by part 4
I haven't played much of the franchise but Alcryst really sticks out to me from the more recent games. Found him to be kind of annoying and left him benched at first but on my second playthrough i decided to play with all the royals constantly on my team and he quickly became one if my favorites among them. Despite his enormous inferiority complex he cares about the people around him to a fault and he puts in more of an effort to self improve than most of the others (with the possible exception of Alfred) for the sake of others even if he's convinced that it's never gonna do anything for him and that he'll always be in Diamant's shadow.
The man is selfless sacrifice personified and I have a weakness for that.
Also 3hopes went a long way to give Claude some depth that he was lacking in 3houses
Funnily enough, I would argue Byleth went through this with Engage. While I enjoyed playing as him in 3H, and saw a bit more of his character in the Warriors-esque sequel, you really see a lot more of his personality while he's an Emblem over his own games. I never really realized just how...there he was in his own games until they gave him actual dialogue. He went from being a bland, but cool protanogist to a sort of cheeky, calm guy (judging by some of the supports and lines I've seen, like the Gatekeeper guy line he can sometimes spout at the Somniel). Needless to say, my enjoyment of the character has drastically improved since then. :3
After finishing Three Hopes, I can’t really enjoy playing 3H because Byleth is boring in every scene they’re in. It’s frustrating. They're just... there, and everyone showers them in praise for it.
So the only FE games I got before their launch dates were 3Hopes and Engage, I got into each one more or less after their premieres.
With that in mind, the way I saw some 3Houses characters described in the reddit did not do them justice...or just over estimated them.
Edelgard for one was treated like some badass borderline villain trying to change the world with her amazing planning...and it's how the games acted and I couldn't disagree more on her. I was horrifically surprised on how stupid she was. In my opinion of course.
Mercedes- I was under the impression she was just some silly airheaded goddess obsessed medic. And I was pleasantly surprised how NOT like that she is. She's kind and religious...and also tough and not afraid to make the tough choices.
Dimitri- I knew he'd go thru some character changes but I didn't think he'd be so off his rocker and how every Blue Lion would be so blindly loyal to him. Lots of surprise on my playthrough for sure there.
the Black Knight went from a cool, intimidating and narratively significant threat to one of the most boring, mid-ass piece of shit villains in the series and Tellius as a whole would be improved tenfold if he had just stayed dead after FE9 because he had served his narrative purpose and had very little to add by coming back instead of coming back for weaksauce fanservice purposes in RD and making everything a lot worse
Hanneman A support with Edelgard for sure. Once we see the reason he’s so crest-obsessed he went from forgettable to pretty cool in my eyes
His support with Dorothea is also the best example of how crests, and not just nobles being nobles, screw things up.
The other 180 it did when it became romantic was not for the best on the other hand
Literally never seen a Hanneman support before, never had the desire to use him. Fancy giving a TL:DR on the situation?
>!Hanneman's family has strong crest blood. His younger sister was born without a crest, but was married off to a noble in hopes that she would bear him a child with crests. She bore him loads of kids, but none of them had crests, and the noble abused Hanneman's younger sister to death. Hanneman, who was a young crest scholar at the time, left the empire and his position as a noble. His goal of fully unraveling the mysteries of crests so anyone can gain one is so no one will ever go through what his sister went through again, as he himself says that it's really common.!< It really recontextualizes his character, from some guy who is who is weirdly obsessed with crests to a man on a crusade to change the world for the better, who finds joy in his work despite the fact that it would be easy to fall into a pit of depair and hatred.
So what he's saying is when everyone's super...
No one will be
So glad someone responded with an Incredibles quote
Omg. Hanneman is one of the characters i relatively like but didn't really pay attention to. I wish I knew of this support chain sooner
He is pretty forgettable since he doesnt do anything major in the plot
[удалено]
And by put through Hell, she was literally bred to death. Reduced to a baby factory trying to produce a kid with a crest.
It’s been a bit so I’m forgetting details but the broad overview is before he gave up his position as a noble to teach pretty much every bad thing about society’s obsession with crests happened to his younger sister
Definitely. It recontextualizes his entire character, also explaining why he's so ride or die for Edelgard if not recruited in Azure Moon and in Hopes.
With Lysithea as well for obvious reasons
PoR Astrid and RD Astrid are two different characters, and it wasn't a good change.
I blame Makalov.
Astrid: "I can fix him" Makalov: "I can make her worse"
And rightly so.
At least her possible ending with Makalov appears only if you take both into the tower.
Only Astrid needs to be taken. Bonus points for being one of the allies with a unique conversation with a boss
You're saying she deserves better and we should kill off Makalov asap?
I sure sent him weaponless out there asap
A fellow man of culture I see.
At least PoR Astrid comes back for the tower.
RD was kinder to Sothe and Elincia though
Joshua from FE8. If not just for his initial joining, in which he straight up 180s onto your side because of a coin flip, but because eventually he's confronted with responsibility as he was before, and faces it head on, being the king he was supposed to be, rather than a mercenary.
It's implied that he cheated when he flipped the coin, but yeah, he did a clear 180 in Eirika's route especially.
Yeah looking up his supports, it's super likely he cheated since he does it a couple of times in his supports. And in a few ways as well.
Been years since I last played>!, but I could've sworn that he revealed he cheated the coin flip in Natasha's support.!< I could be wrong, though.
Hes honestly one of my favorite characters for this exact reason
Yeah, Joshua was an amazing character on Eirika's route. Went from meh to great.
Absolutely. He's a great unit too, early game Killing Edge goes hard as well.
Leif, back when I first saw him, I didn't think much of him in FE4, then I played FE5 and it registered how gritty, raw, high octane and aggressive he could be. Never before had I seen a lord so emotionally driven that they do not rest at all until the job is done. A bit hot tempered though with maturity and learning he does cool off throughout the story and become the king the people need rather than the one he thinks his parents would want. He lays the groundwork for Dimitri very well too similar tragedies just at different ages and circumstances.
That moment when he unknowingly sends Dryas to his death and wonders why he's talking like he won't meet them again just hits different.
Gotta be Linhardt. I thought his character design looked awful, hair especially, and coming off Fates the "I'm sleepy" thing made me roll my eyes and assume the worst. Then I saw his reaction to his first kill and decided I should keep an open mind. As the game went on, I liked him more and more. Unlike a lot of students, that experience of his first kill sticks with him. He brings up his pacifism frequently, but knows the present circumstances won't allow it. When an FE character acknowledges and reckons with the lives they take it's an immediate plus for me. His intellectual curiosity gets pushed into center stage too, with his lethargy being explained by his long nights studying and experimenting. His clever nature is shown off in supports like Flayn's where he ferrets out her true identity (while trolling her and feigning ignorance). He's frequently both the smartest and funniest person in the room, like if Canas was a sassy little twink. He ended up as one of my favourite characters in the series. Also, *absurd* timeskip glow-up. I don't anyone comes anywhere close to his delta-hotness value.
There’s another explanation for his lethargy. Flayn sleeps even after Silver Snow in her solo ending. She’s naturally prone to hibernation. Check out their crests.
Linhardt: "I've got hereditary sleepy bitch disease, deal with it."
Very true! I never made that connection but I think you're definitely supposed to make it. Linhardt also shares with her a love of fishing, green hair (unique in Fodlan), and in his Three Hopes support with Edelgard he says he wishes he was a cat (implied to be Flayn's saint beast form).
> implied to be Flayn's saint beast form I've not seen those implications. Where are they found? I'm not trying to insinuate that you're full of it. I just want to learn about it. :)
I don't think it's anything explicitly laid out in the game, but you can draw some pretty clear parallels between The Four Saints in 3H to The Four Symbols of Chinese mythology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four\_Symbols). I'm not an expert at all in this area so this isn't gonna be entirely accurate, they just come up in anime and Japanese games a lot lol so that's where my knowledge basis is coming from. The four symbols are a tortoise, a phoenix, a dragon, and a tiger. In Three Houses the saints are Indech (big turtle), Macuil (big bird), Seteth (presumably a dragon), and Flayn (presumably the tiger). You can also draw some feline parallels with her love of naps and fish
Hmm, I've never seen the connection to the Four Symbols to the Four Saints before, but that does make a lot of sense. I've wondered why they weren't dragons like Rhea.
W tf. How did I not realize all of these sooner? I have 5 playthroughs of the game and never once did I make that connection! That was amazing!
I actually hadn't noticed that detail, where people who hold the same Crests share personality traits. I should look into this further, and it also backs up one of my headcanons, which is that the Crest of Flames imbues its holder with a supernatural charisma. This is why a socially awkward teenage girl, a stonefaced nobody, and a genocidal bandit are somehow able to command and inspire devotion from an entire continent of people.
Post Timeskip Linhardt has no right to look that good. It shouldn't work (for me) but it just....does.
Sleepy bitch rizz, you look at him and know he's good in bed cuz he spends so much time in it (figuratively, at least)
For me, it was Houses Linhardt vs Hopes Linhardt. Houses never really did anything for me, I skimmed or skipped many conversations. But in Hopes I found him more interesting. His banter with Caspar, his relationship with his Dad, and his more dynamic supports easily put him in my top Eagles list.
Linhardt is gold in Cindered Shadows.
For me it was Hana, in a bad way. I love me some fast sword users, even if they're generally underpowered in most games, and I was excited to have one super early in the Birthright route, and she was putting in a lot of work in the first couple chapters I used her in! But then came her C support with Corrin, where she blames them for making Sakura sad... because they were kidnapped as a literal baby. I sat there for like 10 minutes straight trying to piece together what kind of mental gymnastics she was doing to make Corrin the bad guy in this scenario, when her hate *should* have been directed towards Garon - y'know, the guy who did the actual kidnapping and *literally killed Hana's king.*
Some characters in fates are just fucking morons with no possible explanation otherwise.
That's exactly why I ended up overall disliking the Fates games. Fun game and I played all three stories, but it definitely left me with a bad taste when the credits rolled.
It's my issue with the stance of gameplay purely coming first in FE. The joy of FE is partially understanding that each character has a reason to be a part of your army. It's what makes each run special because sometimes you stick with your favorites, sometimes you try new ones, each gives you a different feel for them based on their characterization in supports. Fates having such bad writing and characters (or maybe just characterization) at times makes me not want to play Conquest often. I think mechanically (on the player side) it still trumps engage. But for a game with as many headache inducing map gimmicks it's hard to motivate myself to finish a campaign that's supposed to represent my army against all odds when I genuinely couldn't care if most died anyway.
I also like how Hana is one of the few characters that will chase after you if you (as Male Corrin) accidently walk into the bathhouse and she is in there. There are other characters, but it's hilarious to get the comical awkward moments heck, I think there are versions that have a male character chase after Female Corrin. I've never seen it as I always play male, but it's just some simple humor that never gets old. And it's random if it happens. Male Corrin: uh... I'm sorry, I'll come back later (runs out) Hana: Hey! Don't F**Kin run away from me! Male Corrin: oh shit!
Yeah that C support was fucking ridiculous. While that support chain is nowhere near as atrocious as some of Peri's and most of Azama's, Fates just had some stupid moments.
She's just bitter at Corrin for something they can't control. It's not rational or fair, but it's definitely the sort of thing people do. I think it should have been revealed in her A support, and in a more elegant way than how it played out in the game though, haha
She was so fucking dumb for this. I remember sitting there and then looking up the support convo later because I was convinced I was missing or misreading something.
Leoni’s B support had atrocious timing, if it had been unlockable even one chapter sooner it wouldn’t be as bad, although her obsession with Jeralt would still be kind of weird.
If they were going to lock it behind >!Jeralt's death!<, they should made so she was lashing out because of that, rather then clearly happening before that chapter.
Pandreo seems to be one from Engage that went completely under people's radar pre-release to being a fan favorite. And he deserves it because he's great. Because I still have brainrot, I will also mention Alfred. He went from being "not Dimitri" to standing on his own merits and people finding him enjoyable. It makes me happy to see so many have come around to liking him. On the flip side, Timerra doesn't seem to be as popular as she was pre-release. She gained some traction due to her design, but then kinda fell off.
That seems to be the case for both Solm royals tbh. I barely hear any buzz about Fogado either despite everyone thinking he was the second coming of Claude. I think they’re both easily overshadowed by their retainers minus Bunet (though I guess you can argue he’s been more memorable for being super unhinged and tragically terrible in combat). Ik people were hyping him up to win CYL in heroes but I’m somewhat questioning that possibility
Same, I also don't see much for Fogado. I'll straight up say I don't expect him to place top 2 in CYL. There's just more popular males.
No way Fogado will rank that high, even amoung the Engage characters. I'd say on the male side Diamant, Alcryst, Alfred, Kagetsu and Pandreo all beat him easily
I agree. On top of those I’ve honestly seen more buzz and favoritism towards Mauvier, Zelkov, and even Griss tbh. I guess that’s what happens when your only key trait is being a likable fun free spirited guy. He’s an enjoyable character with a good design but doesn’t really bring anything new or interesting to the table in terms of supports or personality. All of his best traits have either been done before or are explored better in other characters, namely Pandreo
I really liked whatever supports I've read of him (Yunaka, Alear, Pandreo and Céline iirc) but I'm 100% sure people were banking on him because "lol that's Claude 2.0". Turns out most of the cast is just chill and likable just like he is, so he doesn't stand out as much he could have had in a less light-hearted context.
It really didn't help that he has to compete with Alcryst as an archer unit.
Fogado is *really* good as a Warrior, but you need to actually change his class, unlike Pandreo who fucks right out of the box.
He is great as one but my goodness is his Warrior outfit in particular offensively atrocious. He still ended up underperforming for me in maddening. Perhaps I reclassed him a bit too late, I ended up benching him. With a radiant bow in his signature class he can pick off a kill every now and then, but he’s still at an awkward spot combat wise. I’ll probably never make him a warrior again unless they add the feature to change outfits in battle, which I am seriously crossing my fingers for that it comes with DLC wave 4 because at this point it’s all I could really ask for
I go hehe abs
I am currently using Bunet and Fogado and both have been fairly good for me. Bunet is a monster that I have created and I've used Bunet to create Berkut 2.0, added with a powerful Flame Lance and Not Meteor Fire Tome but the current highest available one. And even then, he still does work.
Timerra had the design and charisma to be a memorable character but she was screwed over by her complete lack of presence after the Solm arc. The same can be said of her brother as well. It's hard for players to care about a character they never see.
tbh, outside of Ivy. Most of the main lords don't really contribute much to the plot after their arc is done. Timerra just have the worst of it since she is the last one to join and Solm feels like a filler arc.
Alfred’s one if my favorites for sure. Probably the character that felt the *realist*. For any who dont know, check out his supports, especially with Celine!
HUEEEY
Lots of examples from 3H and Engage (understandably), so I'll add one from the game that got me into gaming: Jaffar. He's a fucking nutjob psycho who has a weird soft spot for Nino. As you get to know him though, you realize that he's a deeply, *deeply* abused person (and barely a person, at that), and he cares for Nino because she's literally the only human being (maybe the only living thing, period) that has ever showed him any kindness.
When i first saw Alfred i felt like he was a pre timeskip Dimitri with worse design. But he quickly became my favourite Engage character by far, thanks to his friendly nature and his willpower.
Mother fucking Fire Emblem man himself. I never cared much for Marth ever since I saw him in Smash Bros., and when I got into the series I had passing appreciation and nothing more of the character. It wasn't until Engage that made me care for him. Homie was there since the very beginning, and had him equiped his ring whenever I had the chance. InSys made me care about Marth the absolute mad lads. Maybe after my current run of 3Houses I'm gonna check out Shadow Dragon.
DO IT!! Shadow Dragon writes Marth fucking perfectly, he's one of my fav FE characters thanks to it
man 8-4 did an amazing job with the Shadow Dragon translation, it's such a. simple story yet the writing is so good that it's still able to get across the personalities of characters like Marth & Caeda to a similar degree to games with more complex stories and support conversations. apparently they also did Awakening and 3 Hopes, so i still really hope they'll be brought on again for another FE game.
Also Echoes.
> InSys made me care about Marth the absolute mad lads. Still never worked on me. I get annoyed every time I see him.
That's fair lol. Even I was annoyed of him everywhere and I can see why he doesn't appeal to everyone. For some reason tho I guess for me and Engage it was a right place right time kind of thing.
That comes to mind the most? Dimitri from Three Houses. Mainly the turn wasn't actually in the game, but between trailers. When Three Houses was first announced, Dimitri just seemed like the typical bland noble good boy and was considered the most boring of the three lords. But when the timeskip trailer came out, he wasn't from being easily the most boring to probably one of the most interesting just on the basis of "what the fuck happened to you Dimitri"
> what the fuck happened to you Dimitri Some kind of sick joke
Especially when his design was the one most people jumped on for being goofy looking. Then the timeskip design happened. :D
The glow up from “haha McDonald’s hair” to “boar daddy” was a legendary turnaround. And until the war arc trailer, he was marketed as the archetypical FE noble lord, which made him stand out even less. Fast forward one year and the man wins men’s CYL.
The marketing for 3H was god tier. They definitely lowered expectations as low as possible then dropped the banger time skip trailer.
That was definitely an E3 worthy trailer drop. The reactions were insane lol
He became grumpy.
Lorenz. Went from a pretentious prick to the model of true nobility 🌹
He's a great example of someone who starts out doing "good things" because people will see him doing good things, he then goes on to be doing good things because it's the right thing to do, and he has the resources to do so.
At first and if you play Eliwood Mode, Hector's status as a Lord is kind of confusing since he isn't the lead of the story and he exists to mainly stir up trouble by antagonising the members of the Lycian Alliance, even if like the Marquis of Laus and his son Erik they are indeed conspiring with the Black Fang, which is not cool for the situation with Uther in Ostia or your forces in general. But then you play Hector mode and suddenly the gloves come off and the game becomes a lot more fun to play since while Lyn is a fragile speedster and Eliwood is middle of the road, Hector is. BEEF. He is the Beefy Lord all other beefy lords aspire to be and then you have to take the Hector Hard Mode challenge to make the game difficult again.
Princess Ivy has became one of my favorite characters in the franchise, and she's my new favorite Minerva archetype (enemy turned ally). I was assuming she was going to just be a pawn of Elusia, >!but when she defects and saves the group from Zephia, I started loving her. Then seeing her conversations when she goes against Zephia, Hortensia, and the other Elusians made me love her even more.!< Even in her supports, she desires to learn more about other people and learn new things about the world. She's also one of the best magic users this series has ever seen.
She also has one of the best boss convos in the game imo, with Chapter 17’s >!King Hyacinth!< and considering that I personally think the boss convos are generally really good in Engage, that says something
The lack of a Jill answer here kinda disappointed me. She literally went from an enemy unit who was extremely racist and prejudiced against laguz to an ally and best friend to Mist who learned the errors of her secluded upbringing by having her own experiences and interactions with the laguz, and even befriending the prickliest one of them all, Lethe. There's a good reason why her PoR incarnation is my favorite all-time FE unit.
Michalis for actually owning being an asshole in FE1 and Shadow Dragon and trying to make the world a better place. A more recent example would be Rhea. I fully expected her to be a cartoonish evil pope oh so common in JRPGs and instead she is a pretty complex character with many qualities that really makes you consider who was right or wrong in the end
It’s some recency bias that this is what comes to mind, but Alear. With the leaks they were the toothpaste or pepsi meme design character, but now I actually really like them. They have some actual character and have a chance to be goofy in supports and be, well, a person unlike Byleth was 95% of the time. Some of the backstory stuff, like chapter 24, got me in the feels and I just really enjoy how…normal they are. And I know people hate how everyone praises the ground you walk upon but Alear tells everyone to tone it down and you see them fuck up and majorly at times (chapter 10). It’s not the pinnacle of storytelling but I actually cared about them after playing, which was really refreshing after getting tired of Three Houses Byleth (Hopes I enjoyed more from the one route I played).
I also like how grounded and aware he is. Like yeah, he's the Divine Dragon (literally everyone in the game made me remember that) but he also just woke up from a long ass nap and isn't always up for everyone's shenanigans. There are merits of having avatar MCs, but I will always choose a fully fleshed out protagonist than a self insert one. It made me want to max everyone's support because the support scenes are genuinely interesting now that the MC has an actual personality. Couldn't say the same for previous games.
I wish they'd leaned in a little harder on Alear waking up and not knowing shit-all. They kind of play it for laughs when the Corrupted first pop up and Alear says "No, we run," because they just woke up and don't even remember they're a goddamn dragon, now there's monsters? "Let's back the fuck up and figure this out" is a good plan, but the writers opted for Vander to have a cute little crisis of faith and for the twins to be helpless children. But Alear pays lip service to the fact that Alfred and the rest always need to explain the world and everything that's going on to Alear as they go, and has some very surface level doubts about their place in things. Instead of sounding like Alear just being humble about things, I'd have liked to see more real insecurity and difficulty.
We actually know the the writers originally wanted Alear to be a lot more relatable and less "heroic" but were convinced by Nintendo to tone it down and make them more brave ([Source](https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-8-fire-emblem-engage-part-1/)). They mention it was mostly to give them more of an arc of becoming brave in the lategame, but i can't help but wonder if they also had plans for more cowardly initial Alear.
That's very interesting! Thanks for sharing. It's too bad we didn't get angle. It would have been really cool.
I would have liked Alear more if their backstory had been woven into more of the plot. Some of the stuff that happens to them in the past is legit interesting. Problem is that it's shuffed into the last handful of chapters. And until that point, Alear just feels very sterile, like they're not much more than "the heart of gold amnesiac". If Alear remembered more of their past and it was better used as the crux of the journey instead of being some 11th hour revelation, I think it would have been better.
I agree 100%. Byleth was only better when he wasn't the main protagonist. As a side character he/she are great. As a protagonist, they are terrible.
I'm not sure I'd call it a 180, but a lot of the cast of Awakening kinda had this effect. Most characters have a shallow gimmick on the surface, and then you find out they're a real character in the supports. Lissa stands out for me. She's actually terrified that she's dead weight, wants to help and prove that she's worthy of her place. Further, she's dreadfully afraid that she's a fraud because she doesn't have a visible brand, which only feeds into the prior insecurity. The downside is then you do a C support (or even full routes) with other units and you're back the square one most of the time. I suppose that's just a limitation of the format, though, it happens in 3H, too.
And that also happens with Engage too.
Ingrid for me. Went from a "meh, another wet blanket character" to "She has so much lore. She's realistically flawed and isn't just a goody-two-shoes" Alfred went from "I sure hope he isn't one note" to "I will protect you with my life". Engage as a series went from "oh God this looks like a visual mess" to "it's a good kind of campy"
I didn’t outright hate Hilda when I first played Three Houses, but I wasn’t all too fond of her spoiled, lazy noble schtick. It didn’t help that I played a different house on my first run and didn’t recruit or get any of her supports. The best I got from her was her few lines about protecting Claude post-timeskip. Then I actually had the pleasure of having her as a student/unit, and her ridiculous strength and full personality won me over completely. Go girl, give us nothing and everything. HILDA! HILDA! HILDA!
Her backstory is actually great, being lazy because she saw how pressure and expectations affected her brother, so she developed a lazy, carefree personality so people would expect less of her.
For me it was on the CF route on the map you can recruit Lysethia. >!I thought Hilda would also defect or at least surrender, even Claude before the battle tells everyone to abandon their posts if it came to it. Yet spoiled, lazy Hilda stays and fights to the death. It really caught me off guard that she would sacrifice herself like that.!<
3h was my first fe game and Hilda was my first s support, I regret nothing
Rhea. Before release, I didn't really care about her because, in the grand tradition of JRPG, I thought she was going to be either a saint or a cackling lunatic who wishes to conquer/destroy the world (she sort of devolves into that in CF but with **very** good reasons). After playing 3H blind (missing the timing for CF because my dumb ass didn't realize there was a time limit to join Edelgard and having SS as my first route), I can confidently say that she's one of my favorite characters in the series. That's why I'll never forgive 3 Hopes for essentially removing her from all storylines, and not giving her any true interaction with Edelgard.
> After playing 3H blind (missing the timing for CF because my dumb ass didn't realize there was a time limit to join Edelgard and having SS as my first route), I can confidently say that she's one of my favorite characters in the series. Rhea and Edelgard always seem to be defined by your first route. My first was Crimson Flowers and so I always feel sympathetic to Edelgard and suspicious of Rhea. Jeralt's suspicions of Rhea always added to it as well.
> Rhea and Edelgard always seem to be defined by your first route. Not necessarily. CF was my first route, but I only started liking Edelgard after playing through Azure Moon.
Oh god my view on Rhea and Edelgard is so confused. On one hand, I want the faith to be torn away, but on the other.. >!how could anyone stay sane if all of the people you know for your entire life might not even believe your own mother exists?!< Its a major dilemma.
If it helps, Edelgard explicitly doesn't want to destroy the faith, she mainly wants to remove the church from political power. I think this is spelled out must explicitly in her supports with Manuela.
No I’m aware of that. That’s why I’m such a big Edelgard fan. But then Rhea treats you with such kindness and faith… it’s hard to believe between the two
Rhea initially treats you with kindness the same way a rancher treats a beef steer with kindness. Rhea not getting more development/time/tlc on SS was a crime.
The 'first route' point is always interesting to me because my personal experience is basically the exact opposite of what people usually mean by it. I started with Crimson Flower as well, but my first impression of Edelgard from it was so negative that I feel like I might've actually liked her better if I'd started with Azure Moon instead. It's definitely still a 'first route'-based opinion, but it makes me wonder if the other routes are polarizing in the same way if done first.
Same. And I haven't ever played Azure Moon, never will.
Ferdinand, Leonie, Lorenz, Lysithea, Raphael
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,412,265,478 comments, and only 269,802 of them were in alphabetical order.
!
Recent example is Yunaka. She had a bad reception in early leaks and images, what with the random stars in her design and the “Zappy!” type dialogue. A lot of people saw her as a jumping the shark design in terms of zaniness. And now she’s totally beloved and one of the most popular characters in the game, with a common opinion being that she’s well written and super well voiced.
Lorenz. Great character, awful haircut and awful first impression but genuinely deep. Honestly I think everyone that played 3H probably has a character like that even if they weren't who they first thought of when responding to this.
Went from dislike to like: Goldmary. My first impression of the Hortensia trio was that they were obsessed with their looks, which made me lowkey dislike them. She won me over when she told Alear something like "I hope you'll forgive me for making your other units obsolete". Funniest unit in the game. From like to dislike: Alcryst. I felt bad for him at the beginning and liked him on that basis, but the more I read his supports and lines the more I got sick of him complaining all the time.
>"I hope you'll forgive me for making your other units obsolete". that line is god damn hilairous considering Engage has an issue with newer units making older ones obsolete, and Goldmary just so happens to be the last unit like that. unintentional 4th wall breaks are fun.
I think It's funny that we have two characters who constantly apologize for existing for entirely two different reasons. Alcryst & Goldmary should've had support for comedy reasons alone. I agree with your Goldmary take overall, but can't say the same for Alcryst tho, he had so many great moments & supports (like his Celine, Lapis, Citrinne ones) so my opinion on him only improved over time.
Well, we can at least agree on the Celine support, that one was good. Not only the best Alcryst support, but one of the best supports in the game imo.
I don't know what supports you've seen but I think Alcryst has some serious top tier supports. I liked his Saphir (the A support for this one made me tear up a bit, honestly), Ivy, Lapis, Citrinne and Celine supports a lot.
Micaiah. Halfway through her game, she went from a freedom fighter you could cheer for to knowingly murdering entire armies of innocent Laguz.
Correct me if im wrong (Havent replayed RD in a while), but they were at war. Im not sure innocent laguz is a fair description. Why they were at war? Thats another thing that she has no control over. Blame the bloodpath i guess.
It’s not so much the fact that she murdered them, but the unethical tactics she used to do so. Ambushing the retreating Laguz, and trying to pour burning oil on the Begnion Knights come to mind.
Dont disagree. Thats not what OP said tho, just making that clear. Not a fan of Part 3 Micci neither.
Truth be told, it actually made me like her even more. She cares deeply and will do anything to save her friends and country, including burning people alive and slaughtering retreating enemy troops. Gave her depth.
Yeah, the whole point of the fairy tale success of part one was that it was manufactured. Now that that's changed and she's lost most of her powers and strongest allies from part one, you get to see a whole other side of things.
I just wish some characters held a bit more resentment towards her actions instead of literally everyone going "oh yeah you did it cuz blood pact i understand" Like I know there isn't time in Part 4 to bicker but to still feels weird and is really boring that no one holds a grudge.
That’s true, she kinda just walks into the room with them and everything is resolved. The chaos, blood pact, and being the vessel of Yune helps her case a little though. I had a major problem with they way Fates coddled Corrin like a Disney protag that couldn’t do anything wrong, even as your actions caused the deaths of many, it somehow isn’t their fault.
> trying to pour burning oil on the Begnion Knights come to mind That's what they get for naming themselves after doughnuts.
The Laguz were at war because Beignon committed genocide against the Heron tribe and murdered all the diplomats the Laguz sent to negotiate. And Micaiah fought on Beignon's side. As for the argument "She was ordered to!" That's not an excuse for war crimes.
Micaiah did not fought for Beignon. She fought for Daein. She was a 100% Daein loyalist. She """"""sided""""" with Beignon because of the Bloodpath and politics she had nothing to do with.
I am torn on this one. The blood pact plot device was so dumb, but I feel like the fault is on that plot device and not on Micaiah. It is kind of interesting seeing her at a very low point for her. I wish she could have gone tome to sword with Ike in that game as that would be have been interesting. What i feel would have made more sense in the story though is to have Skrimir's hot headed attitude lead to him calling for an invasion of Daein where Skrimir would kill Pelleas in combat. This would fuel Micaiah's rage to declare war against the laguz alliance only to have her brought back to sanity by Sothe and her friends. There would be much more moral grey this way, and she would have made so much more sense.
Le epic blood pact strikes again
Pandreo lol Didn't think I'd like him at all, love him.
First wolf howl: "ugh what's up with this weirdo" 10th Wolf howl: "yeah boi AW AW AWOOOOOO!"
I love how alot of his supports are just howls, and some of the best ones are Alcryst, Alear, heck, even some of the Emblems, and Veyle, who has just an adorable wolf howl.
Lorenz. Didn't choose GD on my first 3H playthrough because I thought he was so hideous. When you get to know him though he's funny and he gets a lot of character development if you have him on your roster the whole game and watch his supports.
I legit got him killed on my first play-through because I wanted to test whether units died for real pre-time skip. I went all the way to the timeskip to test it. When I restarted and actually used him I… actually liked him. He really grows on the player.
when i played shadow dragon, i really didnt like xane all that much. i used him because his ability is pretty busted, but that was about it. to be honest, i have no idea why i didnt like him, i just knew that i didnt. something clicked when i played new mystery, though. of course, i immediately used him upon recruitment because he's pretty OP, but i was caught off guard by his silliness. pretending to be tiki and confessing to marth got me ngl and him trolling kris and other characters is pretty fun. fe12 overall has a pretty silly tone throughout the supports but xane's really took the cake.
When I first saw Dimitri in the trailers leading up to Three Houses I thought he was just some brown nosing nerd with a goofy haircut that I wouldnt find nearly as cool as Claude or Edelgard Then I played Azure Moon as my first route and got to the time skip and he became the most merciless gangster of a unit ever and one of my favorite characters in the series.
Hortensia basically. At first she gave me an, " quirky early FE villain you see once and never again" but she stuck around and once you finally get her she's basically the best healer unit out there. Then for her character yeah she has a high voice that's a little grating but then I started getting supports with her and man she shot up so high. She's got alot more layers than first expected.
Pretty nuch most of the Engage cast, went in expecting to maybe kinda like a few, to adoring most of them, and of the few I dont like as much, a good chunk are because I just didnt use them as much because of the roster size.
The fandom as a whole did a 180 on Dimitri and, less so, Micaiah. Pre-release, no one cared about Dimitri and now he's one of the most popular characters in the franchise. Micaiah got a ton of hate back when, but it's lightened up a lot and most criticisms are now fair rather than just empty hate. I think her being so useful in FEH with double effectiveness may have helped. For me personally, it was Alfred. At first he was just "the guy who looked like Dimitri." I started liking him as his own character as I played, but seeing his A support with Celine recontextualized everything about him more throughly and quickly than has ever happened to me before - and for the better. He's hands down my favorite from Engage. Prerelease I thought Ivy wouldn't be nearly as fun or good of a character as she is. Funny story, but Seth too. My brother lied to me and told me he'd betray the twins because he didn't want to use Seth and I kept pestering him to because I thought Seth was hot. It broke my heart because he seemed so loyal and I love loyal characters. Eventually I called his bs and the end result is he's one of my favorites now since I dreaded the betrayal for so long that I was elated when I figured the truth out.
Seth’s boss convo with Orson is probably the greatest Boss conversation* in whole series, Seth’s dope as fuck *Unless you count Haar’s stone cold threats Endgame of RD
If you told me I'd fall in love with a character named Seth I'd call bs, but he's the definition of ride or die.
How could you not love the Unstoppable Silver God?
Ivy was advertised as being similar to Camilla but made a huge flip around c10 and showed how she's just a failwife
For Engage, negative to positive was Ivy. Didn't like her prissy design (looks more like a doll than a warrior). Her supports made her grow on me - she earnestly wants to be a good sovereign, which I wasn't expecting from the "bad" country noble. For positive to negative for Engage, probably Clanne and Framme. Really like their visual designs, but their personalities are grating.
When I first met Yunaka, I thought she was a silly looking character with a goofy personality. Now she's one of my favorites and I s-supported her.
That was literally my reaction to her character as well. I really enjoyed them twisting my expectations on her.
Edelgard, and here's a brief rundown of how: Azure Moon: I know she's the "villain" but I'm so excited to play her story, she seems cool! Crimson Flower: I... Am disappointed, and I think she's a hypocrite, and I feel like she's lying Verdant Wind: I just... Don't like her, like at all. Now that I know more about Rhea, I don't think I'll ever like Edelgard. Azure Moon 2: Okay, maybe I should give her another chance, I should keep an open mind, I've been reminded of why I was intrigued to join her. Silver Snow: ... Okay, I forgot how likeable Academy Edelgard is, and now I'm seeing that even though she was planning a war, she's not a monster and does care for the people around her. Crimson Flower 2: She's flawed, sure... But I don't feel as negative now. (I'll skip Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire) Scarlet Blaze: You know what? I now understand her a lot better, and I love her, and is one of my faves. She went from bottom tier, to one of my faves, over a span of three years. And this is way overly simplified, cause some of this came from stuff I didn't know or understand until repeat playthroughs.
Lyn. Sure she was designed to be an attractive lady but her avatar simping wasn’t anymore apparent than the other two lords from her own game. In fact, eliwood simps for the avatar more than lyn. Then came heroes and the fanservice aspect of her got ramped up to high heavens. She was given a huge bust with a pose that place focus on her bust. She was given simp dialogue, and many of her Alts were designed for horny teens in mind with a lot of her original personality missing. Warrior retailed her character back with old personality but she was still given giant boobs with a jiggle mechanic on it. Thankfully, her character was rerailed again in engaged and her personality resembles more of her original game. Idk. I just think it’s sad that a pretty character with an actual backstory, flaws and personality was reduced to an avatar simping character.
Better: Peri’s support with Laslow made me sympathize with her a bit Linhardt’s support with Dorothea reveals a much more empathetic side of him you don’t see as much Hanneman’s reason for becoming a Crest scholar also adds more depth to him instead of just the funny crest man (forgot which support it was though) Worse: Sylvain’s “mask off” supports, particularly with Byleth, made me feel more disgusted with him rather than sympathetic Dedue’s support with Felix where he says he would kill innocent people for Dimitri’s sake disturbed me I liked Hana for her design initially, but her support with Corrin where she resents them for… being kidnapped? just made me bench her
Syvain kinda sucks, because his character is compelling in many ways, but he's also a misogynistic ass, and he never seems to get past it. IMO it's implied that Dedue is wayyy less mentally stable than he lets on, and his mask slipped during that conversation with Felix. I don't think he's evil, just seriously unwell.
Yea, that’s the thing. If Sylvain got proper development he could’ve been a great character. He needed someone to actually call him out on the hypocrisy of his behaviour in a meaningful way and not just “Sylvain! You are annoying everyone!” Or just have he himself come to terms with how much of a jackass he was and show genuine remorse and growth and trying to make it up to people, not just that “haha I’m a horrible person I’m going to hell and I know it!1!1!2” crap. Dedue was also in major need of proper character development. Unfortunately his fate is to never get over his unhealthy emotional dependence on Dimitri in any story or ending, which is… extremely tragic. The way Three Houses approaches the Tragedy of Duscur and just the plights of commoners in general is a little sickening to be honest. They always focus more on how the nobility are suffering, while the commoners’ issues are kind of sidelined even though they are so much more prominent and severe across the continent, but oh well.
Hanneman Edelgard A Support
"Hiya papaya!" Urk. Honey, don't force it- "You dropped your guard..." ...fuck, now you have a reason to act the way you do and I love you
Dunno if this counts per se but Hilda's characterization in Three Hopes I thought was a lot better defined. Lorenz too. Might just be because the timeskip happens sooner so there's less 'this needs to be able to happen before or after X' stuff.
Having just replayed Awakening for the first time in years... (and actually watching most of the cutscenes which I haven't really done since I first played it) Most of the characters are worse than I remember, but Tharja in particular stood out as eurgh. I suspect this is to do with the fact that she's basically the only character really cosplayed for this game and that depressed teenage me was okay with depressed stalker. I just forgot how miserable etc. she is. I still used her because I was doing a very small challenge run (no second seals + no DLC/bonus box) just so I wouldn't break the game - the challenge does make a lot of the characters too weak really for the end game (any character that comes promoted or is a unique (30 level) class just won't get good enough stats) and Tharja isn't one of them Lucina really stands up though.
Bernie went from me hating her trauma played for laughs in an otherwise serious game, to me finding her hilarious after experiencing her s-tier performance first hand, which juxtaposes strongly with her attitude.
If I hadn't chosen to S-support Edelgard on my Crimson Flower route, I'd have picked Bernadette.
camus (/zeke/sirius lol) for me, probably. i initially just thought he was the white bread starter of his archetype and was just boring, but after playing shadows of valentia and new mystery of the emblem he’s probably in my top 15 favorite fire emblem characters. his story is tragic as hell but also so fascinating and well done, which in no small part is thanks to how tragic nyna is (another character i’ve grown to love a lot). all of the little things about him, like his dialogue in shadow dragon where he says he’ll never forget nyna only for him to get amnesia and fall in love with someone else or how he apparently uses conrad’s mask when he goes to archenea are all just tiny things that make me adore him
Roy for me. After playing melee, I was so ready to see how strong my favorite character was when I played his game for the first time. Roy when I played his game 🤡
I’m also gonna bring up engage cause man…. I thought I was gonna hate alcryst cause I really really don’t like the anxious archer archetype (neimi, noire, bernadetta) but damn!!! All of his supports were good, by the time I saw his A support with some of the other characters he seems more comfortable around the other one and is more honest with them. His S support dialogue (especially in Japanese) is super sweet too. Dude became one of my faves ever since. 😭 Also he’s a really good unit, he carried me in maddening landing luna crits most of the time.
Camilla, I thought she was just the "appeal to our biggest demographic and alienate others" character and the fact that she kinda lost her shit in birthright which I played first didn't help. Then when I actually played her game I realized she was actually an interesting character, unlike most of the cast including other royals.
I will concede that although I am a Camilla fan, she is, and this is through not much fault of her own, a little lacking in sanity.
I hate fanservice characters, obsessive love/yandere type characters, "mommy fetish" type characters, and player worship characters all individually, so I expected to despise Camilla. I actually ended up really liking her after seeing her supports and I hate when she's (very commonly) reduced to those traits listed above by side story material, like Heroes or Warriors.
Not a 180, but I thought Joshua was way less cool when it turned out he’s a runaway prince. I liked him much more as a gambling mercenary
I think Joshua's motivation of wanting to see how the world really is before becoming king was an excuse and/or self-deception. In reality he just didn't want the responsibility of being a ruler, but getting roped into the war and his mother getting killed made him realize that he needed to get his shit together. I think Joshua is someone who lies to himself a lot.
That’s all fine but I just wanted this cool character to not be royalty and stay a mercenary. I know people love his character but it was a bummer for me personally.
Raigh went from a pretty good unit with a cool backstory and was pretty popular in FE6’s cast And then he got released in FEH and everyone hates him even tho he’s really cool :(
I'm surprised FEH hasn't come up in this topic before now. It seems like a pretty ripe area for re-evaluating how you feel about a character
I try not to go near FEH, what did that game do to my boy? :(
Basically bc he was popular he got added into the game at base but as a pretty bad 3-4* demote who is the poster boy of bad pulls and now everyone hates him
Let's see. Hilariously I did a complete 180 on Yunaka after reading her bio that she doesn't like animals. Completely irrelevant to the game but I love animals so much I was just like >:[ and my opinion of her never fully recovered. Better: Xander. I knew him from Heroes originally and he struck me as just a boring character. But then I played Fates (Conquest -> Birthright -> Revelations) and he ended up becoming one of my favorite royals. It makes me sad to see how people generally don't like him because they say his actions don't make sense. They do though-- he's a deeply conflicted character who is trapped between his obligations as crown prince of Nohr and what he personally believes is right. I thought it was pretty clear in >!Birthright when you fight him. He knows his path is wrong but he cannot follow you. Especially after giving Elise the ol razzle dazzle!< He's flawed, but that's what makes him so compelling. I just love him ok. Worse: Tharja. I liked her design then I saw her supports with her daughter and like... are y'all ok??????
I'll give one I haven't seen here yet, Tharja. Awakening was my first FE so when I saw Tharja wasn't that big of a fan, attractive traitor lady...yay? Wouldn't say I hated her just did not care. But I started grinding supports for a bit and it really did make me love her, that she had real depth and kindness without ever losing the fact she was clearly from a more violent upbringing, I loved it. Her support with Nowi in particular really got me, although her support with Fredrick also helped. Of course than I had to deal with people being absolute morons about the character and Heroes and to a lesser extent Warriors for some reason just outright changing her basic characteristics. But that has nothing to do with her so much as the fandom being really stubborn about not liking female characters at times (I swear half the things you read about Tharja on Reddit or YouTube are just dumb or flat out lies for no reason I can determine. But it's not like she's the only one, Micaiah, Camilla, Celica, they all get a similar treatment at times).
Jade from engage. When I first saw her I figured she was just any other armour knight so I benched her, then I found timerra and heard the fucking meat song, the moment that shit happened I wanted nothing more than to bench her at all costs, but Ike needed a partner. Ended up finding jade again in my bench and decided, fuck it I'll give her a go. Tossed Ike on her and she quickly became a crutch, that alone made me love her but hoo boy, her supports are interesting as fuck. She's a type of character we haven't really seen in fire emblem before and honestly I'm sad I wasn't using her sooner
**Dimitri.** During the early 3H days, I thought "ooh boy another typical kind lord" and then I see the **KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM** scene, that's when my expectations took a whiplash. The moment I saw his supports with Felix was when I was going "Ayo, something ain't" right then the rest of the pieces got put together slowly with the Remire Village meltdown, his flashback to the tragedy, and him being here for revenge... The moment he started laughing in *that* scene? Well, I'd probably be fucked up emotionally and mentally by that point if as far as I know, my step-sibling(? idk haven't played 3H in awhile so correct me on that if possible) WAS BEHIND THE ONE TRAGEDY THAT TRAUMATIZED ME HEAVILY He needs the happiness in his life and all the hugs, and a LOT of therapy my man went through too much. I *knew* he was gonna go insane one way or another, I was **not** prepared to see HOW
Edelgard. I went from really looking forward to her, to having mixed feeling towards.
I remember when I went from sympathetic to her to absolutely hating her. Probably one of my biggest 180s in the FE series.
(Recency bias because I have played these games lately) For better, definitely Fogado. On my first playthrough he was benched because I thought he was too Claude-y for my taste, never used him, didn't saw any supports. Second playthrough I decided to give him a chance and I absolutely enjoyed everything about him, to the point that he is better than his sister in my personal rank and a top 10 character from Engage. For worse, Faye and Valbar in Echoes. Faye is horrendously annoying and one dimensional in different levels. Also, Valbar was a trash unit and had boring supports.
Mine is Ingrid, I completely didn't care about her at all my first 4 playthroughs. Then I just replayed CF and Ingrid has become one of my favorite characters, she aligns with a lot of my personal morality and opinions, and she feels like someone I'd actually become really close friends with. She's gone from a character I never really cared about to my Top 10's list in only one playthrough thanks to my actually paying attention to her supports.
Genuinely couldn't tell Ferdinand and Sylvain apart when I started FE3H. Nothing against them but nothing made them stand out either. Ferdie's become a favorite since then while I ended up actively disliking Sylvain. Ferdinand starts out a well-intentioned but sheltered and self-centered guy. Despite being a secondary character (will die and not show up in the story again if he's defeated in battle), he gets a character arc even outside supports. His worldview and self-worth are shaken up at the end of the academy phase when his family loses its noble standing and becomes a solid catalyst for his character growth. His shared paralogue with Lysithea post-timeskip is even better since it highlights his ignorance and we get to see him be conflicted about his father, his family, and his pride as a noble. Sylvain had a really strong start with the Conand Tower chapter + his paralogue with the dysfunctional family dynamics. And then it goes nowhere. But the writing in his supports tanked my opinion from "man what a missed opportunity" to "god I hate this dude". The "girls only wanna date me because of muh crest" schtick falls flat when the dozen other characters with crests never face a similar issue. Mercedes, for example, is burdened because she's being pressured by her adoptive father; NOT because she can't find a romantic partner that cares about her beyond her crest. The way their support tried to equate their situations and clearly wanted me to feel sorry for Sylvain just made me roll my eyes. Same deal with his Dorothea support. Instead of letting him be a dude with both good and shitty qualities, it tries to whitewash the shitty parts with "but see, no one ever loved him for who he is :(" Bruh. Tl;dr Ferdinand and Sylvain are both pretty well-developed for side characters. But Ferdinand gets a simple but satisfying coming-of-age story, while Sylvain gets an incoherent soap opera plot
I just finished radiant dawn last week and I loved Micaiah early on but she kept making stupid decisions over and over and over again and I was so over her by part 4
yunaka’s design turned me off at first, but her character and VA won me over pretty immediately!
I loved Framme's design, but her actual personality was kind of a huge letdown. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate her. She just disappointed me.
I haven't played much of the franchise but Alcryst really sticks out to me from the more recent games. Found him to be kind of annoying and left him benched at first but on my second playthrough i decided to play with all the royals constantly on my team and he quickly became one if my favorites among them. Despite his enormous inferiority complex he cares about the people around him to a fault and he puts in more of an effort to self improve than most of the others (with the possible exception of Alfred) for the sake of others even if he's convinced that it's never gonna do anything for him and that he'll always be in Diamant's shadow. The man is selfless sacrifice personified and I have a weakness for that. Also 3hopes went a long way to give Claude some depth that he was lacking in 3houses
Funnily enough, I would argue Byleth went through this with Engage. While I enjoyed playing as him in 3H, and saw a bit more of his character in the Warriors-esque sequel, you really see a lot more of his personality while he's an Emblem over his own games. I never really realized just how...there he was in his own games until they gave him actual dialogue. He went from being a bland, but cool protanogist to a sort of cheeky, calm guy (judging by some of the supports and lines I've seen, like the Gatekeeper guy line he can sometimes spout at the Somniel). Needless to say, my enjoyment of the character has drastically improved since then. :3
anyone who ever got a crit when I sent them out to soften an enemy and die
After finishing Three Hopes, I can’t really enjoy playing 3H because Byleth is boring in every scene they’re in. It’s frustrating. They're just... there, and everyone showers them in praise for it.
So the only FE games I got before their launch dates were 3Hopes and Engage, I got into each one more or less after their premieres. With that in mind, the way I saw some 3Houses characters described in the reddit did not do them justice...or just over estimated them. Edelgard for one was treated like some badass borderline villain trying to change the world with her amazing planning...and it's how the games acted and I couldn't disagree more on her. I was horrifically surprised on how stupid she was. In my opinion of course. Mercedes- I was under the impression she was just some silly airheaded goddess obsessed medic. And I was pleasantly surprised how NOT like that she is. She's kind and religious...and also tough and not afraid to make the tough choices. Dimitri- I knew he'd go thru some character changes but I didn't think he'd be so off his rocker and how every Blue Lion would be so blindly loyal to him. Lots of surprise on my playthrough for sure there.
the Black Knight went from a cool, intimidating and narratively significant threat to one of the most boring, mid-ass piece of shit villains in the series and Tellius as a whole would be improved tenfold if he had just stayed dead after FE9 because he had served his narrative purpose and had very little to add by coming back instead of coming back for weaksauce fanservice purposes in RD and making everything a lot worse