I had massive burnout with the Fire Emblem series after playing basically every mainline entry besides Judgral and Archanea era. And then I saw my friend groups play this game and recommend it to me. And then I played it and it's the best Fire Emblem game up to this point. A massive step up from Three Houses in my opinion.

The Cast: It's a bit more on the silly, goofy side where everyone has sort of a gimmick layer one. But most of the cast has a compelling layer two when you get past most of the C supports. I greatly enjoy this cast. It's honestly very consistent compared to most FE games. Among my favorites are the Fell Children (Alear, Veyle, Nel, Rafal), Lapis, Alfred, Zelkov, Citrinne and so on.

The Gameplay: The best in the series, zero contest. I thought it was Conquest for quite a long time, but even this game beats that. A lot of fun units to mess around with, the Emblems are a really fun new mechanic that makes every unit even more fun to mess with, this game has actual map design which is really nice. Even the Somniel is a big upgrade compared to the Monastery from 3H. The last thing I want to say is that this is easily the best looking Fire Emblem game, it absolutely slaughters Three Houses.

The Story: This is the biggest problem people have with the game, that the story is bad, the dialogue is cringey, there are some comical deaths and twists like Marni, Zephia wanting Sombron's kid, and Sombron having a tragic backstory dumping just before he dies. Are they incorrect? Not entirely. There are FE stories better than this (PoR, Sacred Stones to name a few), but I am willing to forgive this one because this really is a loveletter to the franchise and it plays kinda like a sentai show which if you see it that way, it has a good amount of cheese that is kind of endearing. I also actually really like Alear as a protagonist, which I never thought I would say.