WillyFourEyes/Waltzoid's Journal

So, as promised, I powered my way through Scarlet Blaze a second time, but with all of the units I recruited starting out in the mid-40s to do it again on Hard difficulty and fill out the support conversations I didn't get the first time. The "recommended level" curve for the Hard versions of levels is steeper than the ones for Easy and Normal. It looks like for every level increase between maps on Normal, the Hard mode versions go up by two. By the end of the game, the enemy levels top out in the low 100's, and I sure as hell wasn't going to do that much grinding.

Keeping all of my bonuses from New Game+ came with the added benefit of a fully-upgraded base camp, so I can spend more time training and unlocking new skills for my generals. I even stumbled upon "innate abilities", which work almost like Budding Talents from Three Houses where you train a skill outside of the given unit's area of expertise to learn a new spell or ability. The first two I got were "Nullify Magic" for Edelgard (which allows her to no-sell all magic damage after training her as a Gremory), and "Gather" for Monica (which clusters enemies in front of her whenever she starts an attack combo, allowing her to blast them all at once with high-damage area-of-effect spells like Aura and Hades; I got this one by training her as a Trickster). I have a feeling these skills are going to be essential to surviving the game on Maddening difficulty, so I'm teaching as many of these skills as I can to my party members while I have them.

Despite the enemy levels starting to outstrip mine by Chapter 12 or so, I still managed to get through and earn S-ranks by upgrading, "reforging", and "unleashing" my best weapons at the blacksmith, which I'd mostly ignored in favor of finding and using the most powerful weapon drops. Even with levels in the high 60's while the enemy had triple digits, going into battle with +30 forged weapons was enough to close the power gap (though I still got knocked around a lot by the final boss).

After completing my second Scarlet Blaze run, I chose to do Golden Wildfire next because I'd recruited most of their members in SB anyway, meaning I didn't have to focus on leveling them up or grinding for their supports. And you know what that means!
( Mo' spoilers, mo' problems )

I, like a lot of gamers who preordered Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, got my copy of the game on Thursday but didn't start playing it until Friday morning because I was worried about Nintendo dropping the banhammer on anyone who broke the street date (the truth is that Nintendo's products are fine; it's their overzealous lawyers that lots of people have a justified beef with). Ever since then, I've been pretty much playing the game non-stop because I've had so much fun with it (word of advice: don't do this; those warnings to take a 15-minute for every hour of gameplay aren't just there for show), and I have a crapton of things to say about the first part of Scarlet Blaze (Edelgard's path; I'll do Dimitri's and Claude's in future posts).

I specifically decided to take a brief hiatus from Twitter and other FE spaces to avoid spoilers and other players' reactions (except for an email chain with sarajayechan ) so that my first experience with the full game would go untainted. However, now that the 24-hour grace period is over (and I think I've racked up that much play time in just two days), I'm about to drop a bunch of Scarlet Blaze Part I spoilers.

( We can't stop reading here! This is spoiler country. )

I want to share my thoughts about the rest of the Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes demo in a moment, but I just found out that Billy Kametz, the English voice artist for Ferdinand (and also Naofumi from The Rising of the Shield Hero, Josuke from JoJos' Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, and Galo from Promare, the last of which I haven't seen yet), died this week after being diagnosed with a serious case of colon cancer. I don't know of many other people who could have brought the same energy and earnestness to the Ferdinand role that Billy did. Truthfully, I think the casting and voice acting for Fire Emblem: Three Houses was fantastic all around, and his character was a big part of that. It's awful that this happened just weeks before the release of Three Hopes, which means he won't be around to hear his fans talk about one of his last big performances.

R.I.P. Mr. Kametz. We'll all miss you.

( More moderate spoilers for the Three Hopes demo (and some major spoilers for Three Houses) )

The Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes hype train has been running full steam over the last two weeks.

Nintendo has confirmed in a series of weekly videos that everyone from the Blue Lions, Black Eagles, and Golden Deer will be returning as playable characters from Three Houses. All of them seem to be sporting new appearances that land somewhere between their pre-timeskip and post-timeskip looks. As a testament to the dedication of the Fire Emblem fan art community, pictures of the tweener-look Officers Academy students graced Twitter within minutes of each trailer launch. The general consensus seems to be that Annette (Lions), Linhardt and/or Petra (Eagles), and Marianne (Deer) received the best makeovers. Although a lot of people make fun of him, I think Caspar's "rugged forehead scar" and "shonen hero hair" make perfect sense for a guy of his personality. Raphael's pro wrestler headband (almost as if Bass Armstrong was a Dynasty Warriors and/or Fire Emblem character) earns a few coolness points in my book, too.

As for who looks the most fun to play? I'll go with Felix, Dorothea, Bernadetta, Petra, Ignatz (homing paintball arrows for the win), and Marianne (Dorte, I choose you!).

Arrgh! Four more weeks is too far away for me for this game!

Have you ever read a story with a title that serves both as an accurate descriptor of its contents and the feeling one might get after reading it? Such was my experience reading You'll Get No Answers from the Blue Sea Star, a 2019 NaNoWriMo project that attempts to put its own spin on Fire Emblem: Three Houses' story in the space of a small novel.

( It seems it CAN be done, but...should it? (3H and BSS spoilers ahead) )

Well, Wednesday's Nintendo Direct certainly was one to watch. A small part of me is surprised that Nintendo led the show with a new Fire Emblem game. Maybe I shouldn't have been, considering how popular Fire Emblem Heroes and Three Houses are right now. Also unexpected: that this new game is an action RPG like Fire Emblem Warriors (which my save file says I've logged over 100 hours in so far after finishing the game and unlocking the true potential of Lucina's weapon), set in what appears to be an alternate universe of Fódlan, kind of like how Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is set in an alternate past of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

( So, about that Three Hopes trailer (contains large image) )

It only took two years of him watching all of his schoolmates get summoned to Askr before him, but Ignatz finally gets his turn in Fire Emblem Heroes as a bonus unit in the last "Ice & Flame" Tempest Trials. Coming along for the ride are winter variants of Mirabilis (that sleepy fairy from Book IV), Artur, Manuela (another Heroes first-timer), and a combo unit of Lysithea and Lute.

Edelgard was wrong all along - the goddess does perform miracles!

A little while after I started writing my Monica-centric Fire Emblem: Three Houses fanfic, The Ghost of Ochs, I started thinking about what quotes she would use if she was a playable character. I wanted to come up with some sayings that would fit her "nice girl who will Capital-E END you if you mess with her or her friends" vibe I was trying to go for in my story.

Today at lunch, I thought of a perfect critical hit quote for her to use post-timeskip that I wish I'd written when I started making my list:

"Now I'll make YOU disappear!"

It's not quite on the level of Frederick's "Pick a god and pray!" (easily the coolest critical hit quote in all of Fire Emblem: Awakening; don't question it), but I think it perfectly encapsulates the mindset of a post-captivity Monica - she's been on the wrong end of a kidnapping and is now powerful enough to pay back that pain, with interest.

Ugh...why can't my best ideas ever come to me right away?

Yesterday, I made it halfway through A Brighter Dark while waiting on the next installment of leliel_12 's criticism of the same.

Long story short: I don't think it's very good.

There's a lot that I feel needs to be picked apart, but in the interest of saving time and space, I'll limit my list to include a few things that stuck out to me for the first 22 chapters:

( Moderate spoilers within (and a content warning for a character's death) )

The story ground to a halt several months ago, so we won't get to see how it actually ended, but I wonder if I should incorporate the notes from "The End" if I ever get around to doing a full review. All I can do is keep reading and hope that there'll be something I can genuinely root for, but considering how frustrated I was with the first quarter of it, I don't have high hopes.