When good Sonic game I say:
Bitches love my momentum based platforming.

When bad Sonic game I say:
This time I'm really gonna do it.

Throughout Tear Ring Saga, there are multiple points where decisions you make will give you different cutscenes. One such case happens during the game's epilogue, where 1 of 2 scenes may play depending on a previous decision. These 2 possible scenes include one between Attrom and Lyria and one between Xeno and Juni. Here, I will explain how the differences between these cutscenes is a commentary on the idea of media striving to be unproblematic.

The cutscene between Attrom and Lyria is a fairly shallow moment of comedic relief. It's not poorly written, just simple. Lyria jokes about returning to a known human trafficker so that Attrom will agree to let her join him, and he gives in. Again, not terrible but also you don't learn anything profound about either these characters or the world they live in.

As for the Juni and Xeno scene, we hear how Juni's family was targeted by enemy soldiers during an unexpected attack by a neighboring country. She witnessed the murder and subsequent desecration of her family, all the while she pretended she wasn't related to them because it was the only way she could save herself. Juni laments that she had to beg her own family's murderers for mercy before confiding in Xeno that he's the only person she trusts due to them having a similar past.

We then learn that she's been changing her appearance ever since out of fear that her past will be exposed, and we get what is quite possibly gaming's first White Woman Jumpscare when Juni reveals that part of her disguise includes darkening her skin and she's actually white. I would hope the problematic elements here are obvious.

The racism in Juni amd Xeno's scene inexcusable, yet it is attached to one of the most emotional moments in the game. In contrast, Attrom and Lyria's scene contains nothing so offensive but is comparatively a very dull and forgettable part of this 2 hour epilogue.

So what is this getting at? A lot of great art contains problematic elements or is made by problematic people but if you're mature enough to understand that then you can open yourself up to a whole new world of enriching and intriguing stories. Alternatively, you can go out of your way to only consume the cleanest content conceivable but that's how you're going to end up in your 20s watching Bluey or that disney movie about the singing Colombians. There'll be no risk of your being exposed to uncomfortable topics, but you're also going to stunt your analysis skills.

The lyrics of english Persona tracks never sound particularly idiomatic. It never gets into incomprehensible territory but more often than not it sounds a bit awkward. Persona 4, however, uses this to it's advantage to have the lyrics really mirror the contents of the game's themes and narrative. The vocal tracks in P4 tend to have a clear aim but when you actually look into the lyrics you realize how little it actually says about what it's trying to cover.

Let's take the main battle them for example. "I reach out to the truth of my life" is one of the first things you'll hear every time you enter a battle so clearly the song is meant to resonate with the game's themes of truth and lies. However if you actually read the lyrics to Reach Out to the Truth, you'll quickly notice that a majority of the lyrics are nonsense that only connect to that core theme of "truth" through some pretty extreme mental gymnastics. This connects to the game as a whole because Persona 4 is very clearly trying to make a statement on topics such as truth and identity but when you actually read into the text at a deeper level you'll find that the game actually has fuck all to say on any of these subjects.

Remember when Fire Emblem was about, like, war and politics. It even had commentary on human suffering and religion and discrimination and so on and so forth. Fire Emblem used to be good. It used to mean something.

(For a more serious review:

I'm not totally opposed to the idea of a trashy fanservice game that only exists as an anniversary title, but if that was the goal of this game then why waste their time with the brand new world and characters that no one seems to care about. Why not make it a series-wide crossover and include several characters from each game instead of only 1 character. I've seen a couple people say that maybe this game was only made so that they could sell more swimsuit alts in the gacha game and honestly that idea makes me a bit depressed. The idea of a series like Fire Emblem going the route of pokemon where new games are primarily made to sell merchandise is pretty disheartening. I'm not actually that pessimistic about the future of FE though. We know an FE4 remake is coming and I'm currently praying that the team that made 3H is working on that.)

Completing this game took me roughly 150 hours and by "complete" I mean playing the 3 story routes, reading the supports, and playing the paralogues. However, if you sort the reviews for this game by "most liked" you'll find that most of the negative reviews for this game were made within the week it released. Am I saying these people are full of shit and gave the game a negative review after only playing a miniscule fraction of it's total content? Yes. I feel that people heard the premise for this game then immediately slapped it with the "fan-fiction" label and didn't give it a fair chance.

(That was actually entirely unrelated to my review of the game, I just wanted to complain.)

Three Hopes' story paths are a mixed bag. I think Scarlet Blaze is just thoroughly good, no complaints there other than an unsatisfying ending. I really loved the opening chaoters of Edelgard's route. The fact that everything moves so quickly shows that this is something she's planned for years and habing played Three Houses really enhanced the experience here. One of my favorite moments was when Jeritza volunteers to teach the Black Eagles and realizing he and Edelgard must have planned that way ahead of time. Golden Wildfire is also pretty good. I feel like the majority of the negative reaction to this route comes from people seeing red at the thought of their upside down meme man siding with Edelgard even though her winning makes for a better jumping off point for his own ambitions than the kingdom winning. Azure Gleam kinda sucks though. Removing Edelgard's agency also removes everything that makes her a compelling character and this route feels a lot more slapdash than the others.

The lack of satisfying endings for any of the routes also sucks. The devs said in interviews that they didn't want this game to invalidate Three Houses, but I honestly thinks that's a lie. They probably just didn't have the time or resources to make the extra chapters and so had to fabricate a reason for why the routes end like that.

While the main story can be hit or miss, Three Hopes has what I believe to be by far the best supports in the series. There's a much greater emphasis on world building in the supports which I hope continues to be the case for future games. It's structure is way less limited than prior games and there are certain supports that can only be unlocked after seeing different supports, meaning that they can reference each other. I desperately hope that future games keep this iteration of the support system, I don't wanna go back to 3 conversations and an optional S rank for literally every single pairing.

I grew up during the GameCube and Wii era so I'm fully willing to acknowledge that nostalgia plays a part here, but I've always found the environments in the GameCube Pikmin games to be some of the most memorable in gaming. They feel cozy but not artificially so, they're still lived in worlds. I could spend hours watching the wildlife do their own things while walking around the lush scenery present in these titles. I'd say this is even more apparent in Pikmin 2, where it's clear the dev team had years to work with the hardware and really get the most out of it. The overworld of Pikmin 2 is a place I can get truly lost in with all the little details added to make this world feel more real than the previous game.

But you don't spend most of your time in Pikmin 2 in the overworld. You spend it in caves. By command of your employer, you must spend a majority of your time scrounging in these dull, repetitive caves all for the sake of profit. There's a beautiful world right within your grasps but you can't experience it because you need to be gathering treasure. Much like how the first Pikmin had anti-war themes, Pikmin 2 contains anti-capitalism themes. Every moment of Pikmin 2 revolves around Olimar's entrapment in a capitalist structure. When you start your day, the first thing on your mind is where you will find the treasure needed to meet your quota. Not for your own survival, not for the benefit of the indigenous creatures aiding you, but for profit. Pikmin 2 is the most exhausting game I have ever played. If you're playing proficiently then you'll spend upwards of several hours of each day going through caves to get more treasure. Every second you're not in a cave you'll be trying to either find the next cave, find treasure in the overworld, or grind up Pikmin to make getting through the caves easier. When I would finish a play session I felt the same way I had felt after working a shift, that being tired and ready to quit.

As much as I believe Pikmin 2 to be an excellent portrayal of capitalism and how it leads to the mental and physical deterioration of the people trapped in it, I can't bring myself to rate this game highly. It's one of the worst games Nintendo has put out and seeing that it has high review scores shocks me. Though maybe everyone just really digs anti-capitalism narratives even if the gameplay is miserable.

The absolute epitome of junk food video games. Nothing to offer, nothing interesting to say, nothing that makes this game worthwhile. A shallow imitation of Hashino era Persona, I can't imagine why someone would choose to play this game unless they're deeply invested in either of the 2 series involved in this "crossover". If you're coming at this as a Megami Tensei fan then maybe you'll find some joy out of the gameplay, but if you're interested in TMS due to Fire Emblem then this game will be a complete waste of time for you. I honestly have a hard time believing this was ever meant to be the FE crossover they had initially planned. Also, fuck me sideways I cannot stand this game's writing. I can't say how it compares to other MegaTen games but compared to FE it's nauseating in such a fashion that I get flashbacks to Fates.

In the 1918 short story "The Spider's Thread" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, buddha looks into a pond and sees hell on the other side. Given the amount of buddhist symbolism in Fire Emblem Fates, I don't consider it a stretch to claim that Azura going through water to reach Valla was inspired by this story. In this interpretation, Valla would be hell. The idea of Valla being hell is supported in the text given that most of the conflicts within Fates' narrative stem from there, but it's also supported both on a meta level and in the gameplay.

To start with the meta element, the point where Corrin and the rest enter Valla is also the point where the story becomes truly horrible (hellish, you could say). All the ridiculous plot contrivances and poor character writing come to a head here. Who's leading Hoshido while all its rulers are gone? Iunno. Why does Corrin trust this child despite only ever meeting brainwashed puppets in Valla? Iunno. Why do we get heart to hearts with the Hoshido parents but not Garon despite him needing the humanization the most? Iunno. Why are the brothers the only siblings with a shred of plot relevance? Iunno. Why does Azura completely lack agency and only exist to point Corrin to the next plot point? Iunno. Rev's story could have been generously described as rocky at the absolute best until now but with the main characters taking the plunge into Valla, so too does the quality of the story.

The gameplay is also relevant here. The map gimmicks in Valla are horrendous. Constantly waiting around for platforms to move make the maps slow and tedious and when it's not trying to be a platformer the maps are often incredibly plain with enemies interspersed randomly. Awakening also had bad gameplay but at least that was easy to get through, Revelation is just a slog.

Chapter 22 of FE5 is a commentary on the idea of a "fair fight" in the context of warfare. Leif is not backed by the force of an army, he's leading a small rebel force to reclaim his homeland and unify Thracia. Up against Reinhardt, who is a top general in one of the continent's strongest military forces, Leif has no chance in a battle that would be seen as fair. As such, he has to use warp staves to kill the commander and end the battle early. This brand of tactic is usually seen as underhanded or as "cheesing the game", but is it? How is it unfair for Leif to use what little resources are available but seemingly fine for Reinhardt to come down on him with the entire force of Freege when Leif's entire army comprises less than 50 people.

To bring this back to the idea that warp strats are the only way for Leif to win, it's worth noting that you get a warp staff from a village right next to your starting position. Because of this citizen giving Leif the warp staff, it becomes possible for any player to beat this map with as little risk of failure as possible. Thracia's freedom from the empire was not won through fair strategy, it was won through the citizens working together to fight back.

In my Gaiden review, I said that I believe the differences between Alm’s and Celica’s routes are part of a meta narrative that was meant to showcase the merits of taking risks in game design. You can just read my Gaiden review if you want an in depth explanation of what I mean, but the long and short of it is that Alm’s side has a traditional story and traditional gameplay which leads to it being boring whereas Celica’s side is innovative in both areas and better off for it.

This reading of Gaiden’s material is supported by the changes made in FE15. The sexism present in Gaiden has somehow been made even worse. Not only are all the damsel in distress tropes kept untouched, but now they’re accompanied by horribly uncomfortable C.G. art showing them in vulnerable positions. There’s also the addition of Faye, who fills the (unfortunately common) role of the female character who only exists to be obsessed with the male protagonist. There’s also a much greater emphasis placed on the idea of Alm being an everyman rising up against an oppressive empire despite the fact that the twist of him being a royal is still in the game. By doing this, FE15 plays into 2 tropes that are extremely common within lowbrow media aimed at young men. Alm is at once an underdog beating impossible odds and a chosen one who’s loved by all through no effort of his own.

Looking at Celica’s side, this theme continues. The biggest difference between the routes in Gaiden is that when Celica’s side did the damsel in distress trope, it was other women who saved her. FE15 adds new scenes which put Celica into precarious situations where she is saved by a new character who is, you guessed it, a man. There’s also the ending of chapter 4 where she has her agency taken away from her by Jedah so that she can later be rescued by Alm. While something like this was present in Gaiden, the devil’s in the details. In Gaiden, Celica and her company were fighting off Duma’s forces themselves while waiting to rendezvous with Alm so that they could take out Duma together. In FE15, Celica is imprisoned and is a sitting duck until Alm is able to save her.

What do all these changes have in common? They’re almost unanimously considered to be the worst parts of the game. Exactly. They’re the worst parts. By making the worst elements of the game also be the parts that lean the furthest into patriarchal tropes furthers the message that sticking to tradition is bad and relying on these tropes will only serve to drag down the quality of the work.

What does it take to change the world? Does it require one to work within the established societal framework to improve living conditions? Or does it necessitate reaching out to those who are different from yourself to build new, stronger systems? What if you believe the world to be so foundationally rotten that the only logical recourse is not reformation, but total destruction of said systems? This is the dilemma presented in Fire Emblem: Three Houses and each ideology is displayed through the game’s three central lords. Dimitri of Faerghus, Claude of Leicester, and Edelgard of Adrestia all champion one of these lines of thought. While they may not seem to be diametrically opposed on the surface, the circumstances of Fodlan result in a peaceful resolution seeming far out of reach. Of these three opposing youths, one speaks to me personally more than the others. If you’ve taken so much as a cursory glance at my online presence, it should be readily apparent who I am speaking of. In this essay, I will be explaining what it is about Edelgard von Hresvelg that I personally find to be so compelling and why, over three years after FE16’s initial release, I still consider her to be one of my favorite video game characters.

Few in Fodlan can claim to be as privileged as Edelgard. Born as the heir to the Adrestian Empire, the strongest of Fodlan’s three nations, she seemingly has no worries in life. Power, wealth, and status are all readily available to her yet even that does not save her from Fodlan’s emphasis on crests. Imprisoned as a child, Edelgard and her siblings became the victims of blood experiments conducted by an elusive cult in an attempt to grant a single person two crests. Of her ten siblings, she was the only survivor. Witnessing the tortuous ruin of her family as well as the effects she suffered herself imparted lasting psychological trauma on Edelgard, but she is not the type to keel over. This experience instilled in her that something had to change, something like this can never be allowed to happen again. Her conviction in this belief was her strength. Despite all that she had endured, the one thing that kept her going during the darkest parts of her life was her vision for a brighter future. “As the rain falls on the path, I chase your shadow. I don’t feel a single drop or the ground below”.

Despite being granted access to practically anything she desires by virtue of being heir to the throne, the one thing that is out of Edelgard’s reach is time. Her lifespan has been drastically shortened by the blood experiments so if she wants to ensure that no one like her is created again, she has to work fast. We see this within the first hour of the game when a bandit who (unbeknownst to anyone else) has been hired by Edelgard attacks her and the other house leaders in a ploy to remove Dimitri and Claude from the equation. While this specific plan may have been foiled by the arrival of Jeralt and Byleth, we see multiple instances of Edelgard’s preemptive planning throughout the first twelve chapters. After Edelgard makes her plans for war apparent her classmate, Linhardt von Hevring, states that she “must have been making preparations for quite some time”. The most damning of her activities though is her allyship with Those Who Slither in the Dark, the very same group that conducted the blood experiments on her. Edelgard did not do this for no reason though, she did this because she needs them if she’s to achieve her dream. TWSITD are deeply ingrained within the Empire’s upper echelons to the point where her own uncle is their leader and if she were to make an enemy of them as well then she would be truly fighting a losing battle. As such, she chose to use them as best she could as a means to her ends even if she found them to be deplorable.. “Then you turn to me and I stop before I know and the lie upon my lips, I let it go”.

There is one thing though that Edelgard’s plans do not change, that she will have to spend a year at the officer’s academy all the while harboring the fact that she will throw the whole continent into war in just a year’s time. She meets people of all different backgrounds during her time at Garreg Mach, some coming from the common folk, some from lower noble houses, and even the heirs to the other two countries. She spent day in and day out surrounded by people who she knew would want her dead in just a few short months because of her actions but she had to press on for the sake of her new world. “Cross my heart, making vows I know will be betrayed”.

Edelgard is under no illusion that her schemes will grant her anything but more enemies. By lying through her teeth to everyone at the academy she knows she will be seen as naught but a manipulative warmonger when the time inevitably comes to put her plans into action. History is written by the victors, a fact Edelgard is well aware of. If she cooperates with a death cult and wages war on half the country just to lose in the end she knows she will not be remembered fondly. Her dreams for an equitable future will be far overshadowed by her heinous actions. “A sad girl’s pleas live only for a breath and then they fade”.

Despite all this not only is her conviction unwavered, it’s strengthened. As mentioned before, she meets a lot of people during her time at the monastery. People like Lysithea and Sylvain who also suffer as a result of crests. People like Dorothea and Jeritza who are victims of Fodlan’s nobility. These experiences only further cement in Edelgard’s mind that Fodlan as it stands can not be allowed to remain unchallenged. Someone has to rise up, something has to change. Edelgard felt that she alone had the moral responsibility to be the one to reign in this new era given that she’s one of the few with the power to do so. She could be yet another in a long line of rulers who sat idly by and watched as her people suffered, but that is not a future Edelgard will allow to come to pass. “As the wind calms my thoughts I hold strong on this terrace. I feel at peace, carried away by the wind’s song”.

And so, we’re here. Edelgard declares war on the church and by proxy the kingdom, shattering Fodlan’s fragile peace. This, to me, is an incredibly powerful scene. She does not attempt to reason with the church or the kingdom because trying to reason with your oppressors is a fool’s errand. This is represented in Edlegard’s change in design after the time skip. Dawned in a blood red cape and wearing literal devil horns, Edelgard becomes the very embodiment of the demon that the church fears. You can not attain freedom while looking like a good person in the eyes of your oppressors, this is what you have to become. Taking such extreme measures was the only way to ensure a better future for humanity. People will die in this war, but people are dying as a result of those systems right now. Fodlan’s facsimile of peace is not worth the countless lives that will be lost in the time it would take for gradual reform to have any effect. Those in power could live comfortably for the rest of their lives while working on these reforms but the same cannot be said of their subjects. Such a violent outburst was the natural result of these brutal, irrational systems.

This was a choice that many struggled to understand. Those from the Alliance couldn’t reconcile with why she would go this far. People from the Church and Kingdom wanted her dead. Most notably, Edelgard’s declaration of war as well as outing herself as the Flame Emperor destroyed Dimitri. Enraged by what he perceived to be flippancy towards the bloodshed her actions will inevitably cause, he wants to violently murder Edelgard. While this may seem like an extreme reaction, it’s only natural that he would feel this way. How could he understand her gripes with the nobility and crest systems? He has no shortage of support systems available to him and unlike Edelgard he walked away from his traumatic experiences physically unscathed. While he is still a victim of both systems he has not suffered to nearly the same extent that Edelgard has so it’s understandable that he wouldn’t harbor the same hatred as her.

Throughout several encounters between the two, Dimitri always makes it a point to bring up that Edelgard’s new world will be forged in blood. “Someone must put an end to the cycle of the strong trampling the weak” Dimitri says, yet how are you to stop that cycle if you don’t gouge it at its core? Edelgard’s new dawn may be built atop a mountain of corpses but could that self same statement not be made of the Fodlan we see in 1180? It’s clear as day that Dimitri wants positive change to come to Fodlan but he lacks the backbone to make it a reality. He is admittedly able to make quite a bit of progress as evidenced by the character epilogues of the Azure Moon route but in that case he’s only able to make that progress because of the actions taken by Edelgard. Had she remained docile, everything would stay as it was.

Speaking of Azure Moon, Edelgard’s death in that route is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. After her defeat, we see Edelgard kneeling on the floor while Dimitri reaches his hand out to her. This parallels two other scenes in the game, those being the encounter between Byleth and Dimitri at the beginning of Azure Moon and Dimitri’s death in Crimson Flower.

At the beginning of Azure Moon, Dimitri was at the lowest point of his life but Byleth’s kindness was able to pull him out of that. Looking at Edelgard, having shed the hegemon husk, he saw himself. A person who had been warped beyond recognition because of the world they were born into. He extended the same hand that Byleth had once extended to him. Looking at her, Dimitri calls her El upon which Edelgard smiles. During Crimson Flower, when talking to Byleth, Edelgard gives them permission to call her “El”, a nickname whose use is reserved for those closest to her. She says that there’s no one left who calls her by that name but that’s clearly not quite true. Dimitri wants to rekindle the sibling bond that they should share but life isn’t that simple, it never is when it comes to conflict. Edelgard does not dwell on the past like Dimitri does. She looks to the future and understands that this war cannot end with everyone talking it out and working on themselves, one of them has to die. In this case, Edelgard is the abject loser and this war will not end so long as she still lives. And so, Edelgard throws a dagger into his shoulder to force his hand. This is the same dagger that Dimitri gifted Edelgard when they were children under the pretense that she uses it to carve a path forward, and by throwing it into his shoulder she is returning that sentiment. Edelgard has done her part to change the world, now it’s Dimitri’s turn.

As for how it parallels Dimitri’s death, it displays the stark difference in worldview between the two. Dimitri clung to the hope that Edelgard could be saved, that his last living family member would survive this war whereas when the roles are reversed we see the extent to which Edelgard had accepted that her path would be one soaked in blood. This doesn’t mean that this was an emotionless kill for Edelgard, though. Dimitri’s last words are “to the fires of eternity with you… El…”. As discussed earlier, this nickname is one of great personal meaning to Edelgard. Part of the tragedy of her character is how she has to kill her last remaining family if she’s to create a new world. She’s hoping that in recreating Fodlan she will construct a society in which nothing like this will ever happen again.

While Edelgard doesn’t take quite as prominent a role in the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes, her actions in those stories still give us some insight into her character. During her death in these routes, she asks Byleth to put an end to her because “people across this land are killing each other”. At this point in the story, Edelgard has lost and her continued struggle would only serve to prolong the conflict so she decides to allow her death to come swiftly. If you are willing to kill for something then you must be willing to die for it as well and the possibility of her death is something that Edelgard had long since made her peace with. Afterwards we see that she made arrangements to ensure that the wider world would learn of TWSITD so that they may take them out in her stead. This shows us that she wants the best for humanity regardless if she comes out on top.

Edelgard’s relationship with Claude is far less textured than with Dimitri but it’s still worth noting. During their encounter in Verdant Wind Edelgard tells Claude that while his ideals may closely align with her own, she is not comfortable with allowing someone who can not understand the extent of the people’s suffering to take the reins. Claude has absolutely suffered greatly because of his lineage but his experiences are not as conducive to the ruler needed if Fodlan is to change. He doesn’t have nearly as intimate an understanding of how the crest and nobility systems affect both the common folk and nobility.

Claude’s seemingly biggest issue with Edelgard (and just about everyone in Fodlan for that matter) is their close mindedness. Claude’s ideal future is one in which borders are practically non-existent and people of all different backgrounds can coexist peacefully. His big problem though is that he simply isn’t knowledgeable enough on Fodlan’s history to understand how to make that dream a reality. Edelgard understands specifically that if she wants to induce large-scale societal change then TWSITD and the upper echelons of the church are what need to be eliminated first and foremost. Claude, by contrast, doesn’t even know TWSITD exist until much later in the game and due to their extensive rewriting of history he’s unable to pin down how the church negatively affects people as well. We see him start to connect the dots during the academy phase but, through no fault of his own, he still falls short. I will admit that part of the reason that Claude seems like a comparatively lackluster character is because he got stuck with a route that’s a carbon copy of another, but I don’t think discussing meta elements like that would be relevant to the purposes of this review.

The last major player within FE16’s story that Edelgard has a significant connection to is Rhea. The two actually have a lot in common. They had ten siblings who were unjustly murdered, they both rose to power in a war that was meant to extract revenge on those who harmed them, and they both went to great lengths to ensure that none would have to suffer as they had. The thing that sets them apart though is their faith in humanity. Rhea was terrified at the prospect of something like the Zanado Massacre happening again and as such chose to place herself as a figure of authority so that she may intervene should the need arise. On the other hand, we see through her endings that as soon as Edelgard constructed her new world, she stepped down from her position of power. She has faith that humanity can be allowed self-jurisdiction and as such it would be wrong for her to rule over them as Rhea once did. This is encapsulated by the theme that plays during the final moments of Crimson Flower, titled “A World for Humanity”.

Throughout these three routes, we see Edelgard as a stalwart emperor who would stop at nothing to achieve her goals. While this is true, Crimson Flower shines a different, much more human light on her. We see how she interacts with her friends and how she just exists beyond this persona of the Flame Emperor. One of my favorite scenes in the whole game is the A rank support between Ferdinand and Edelgard. Ferdie brings up his concern that the class divide will remain strong post-war due to the disparity in education. The two then work together and basically come up with the idea of public education. While some may find it concerning that Edelgard seemingly hadn’t accounted for this, what this shows is that her revolution is not meant to fix every problem in the world in one fell swoop, instead it is meant to lay the groundwork so that such developments can be made in the first place. We see through this support just how much Edelgard needs her friends to support her and pick up the slack where she can’t.

We also see through various supports and interactions that Edelgard really is just a normal girl underneath the mask. She feels emotions, she feels a connection to the people she’s fighting for, and she feels a deep love for those she depends on. Even people who she doesn’t mesh well with like Linhardt or Bernadetta are still people she wants to take into account so she can ensure a comfortable life for all in her new world. Through her interactions with some of the more devout characters, mainly Manuela, we see how she’s going to great extents to ensure that none will be left behind even if they are ideologically opposed to her.

To wrap this back to what I said in the opening paragraph, the reason I love Edelgard is that she’s uncompromising in her ideals and willing to take action against violent, oppressive systems. She believes that an ideal future is one where humans are under no obligation to follow the will of a god or king and can instead choose their own way of life. Though in truth, the real reason that I love Edelgard so much is that I am very, very homosexual.

Birthright is an incredibly inoffensive game. I'd be lying if I said that any aspect of this game were bad but it would also be a lie to say any aspect is especially good.

I'm gonna talk about the first 5 chapters before getting into the BR specific story. I feel one of Fates' biggest problems is the complete lack of gray morality. Hoshido is obviously the right decision which makes the choice this entire trilogy is based around feel trivial. Also, Mikoto's death is probably the most pathetic story beat in this series. We have known this woman for less than an hour but we're meant to feel sad at her death? Further, Mikoto is a stranger to Corrin yet her death impacted them enough to push them into dragon mode? It's honestly more impressive than anything that they managed to make a death that was less impactful than REDACTED from Awakening.

Past that the story is almost entirely filler. There are really only 2 things that happen in this story. The first is reuniting with your brothers and the second is invading Nohr but those only make up a few chapters of this 28 chapter long game. This story definitely isn't bad but that's not exactly impressive when the story plays it this safe. There are some parts that I like. That is to say I like Leo. He's cool. The fact that Garon was just an evil dragon in the end rather than having a shred of interesting motivation was a bit of a letdown. That's pretty much all I have to say about the story, it sure does exist.

The supports are excruciatingly boring. They're so long-winded and have absolutely no substance to them. This is by far the most lifeless cast I've ever bore witness to, it's amazing that this game has so many supports but the cast still has no depth. Oh, also, you find out that the Hoshido family isn't really your family. This was obviously only done to allow the player to marry whoever they want without having outright incest (I belive we get to talk more about that in Rev, oh boy). Gotta love how the developers were less focused on telling a good story and more focused on making sure the player didn't feel too weird for wanting to marry and impregnate their 13 year old sister

The best part of BR is the new mechanics. Hidden weapons are a ton of fun to make use of and the ninjas are easily my favorite new class. The reclass system has been massively improved from Awakening and actually requires some thought this time. This game really isn't difficult enough to warrant diving into these systems but the systems themselves are so fun that I find myself wanting to explore them anyways.

The map design is probably the weakest part of the gameplay. It's very much a sequel to Awakening with large open maps and enemies thoughtlessly dispersed throughout. It got rid of the absurd ambush spawns though which is a huge plus.

I think the biggest improvement BR (and the other routes as well) made compared to Awakening is making it significantly harder to juggernaut with a single unit. Corrin is obviously strong but not nearly enough to solo the game with ease like Robin could and the presence of debuffing weapons makes that style of play even less feasible. This makes training up a group of units actually worthwhile which in turn gives you more opportunities to engage with Fates' unique systems.

Even though I enjoyed my time with BR overall, I still can't bring myself to recommend it. This game doesn't have anything that makes me think it would be worth someone's time. Most people who I've met enjoy FE for either the story or gameplay and regardless of which side of the fence you're on, there are most definitely games you would enjoy more than BR.

Edit: oh mein gott I forgot to mention the weird baby dimensions. They make no sense but did you really need me to tell you that. At least the kids can be fun as units but story wise it's an absolute nightmare.

The feeling I associate most with FE13 is nostalgia. Not only was it my first Fire Emblem game but it was also the first game I played that had a heavy focus on its story, and it blew my 11 year old mind. I think of the hours I would spend playing it, stuck in an immensely gratifying loop of playing chapters, unlocking supports, unlocking paralogues, and then playing more chapters. Everything about FE13, the music and visuals chief among them, remind me of simpler times. That makes it all the more of a shame that this fuzzy feeling completely dissipates upon actually playing the game. I replayed FE13 very recently primarily for the purposes of this review, and the thing that stood out the most to me was how agonizingly dull it was.

The story is the most unoriginal I've seen so far. FE13 can be cleanly split into 3 parts. The first is a war with another country that can be generously described as political drama. The second has a generic conquerer dude causing problems. And the third is fighting a death cult. All of these are storylines that have been done to death within the FE series but what makes it so egregious here is that they're not even well written. The lack of world building and the one note characters makes it so hard to really care about anything that happens in this story which is painful because this story had the potential to be cool but it was completely screwed over by incompetent writers who seemed more intent on making generic tropey anime characters to worship your self insert rather than tell a good story.

You can tell they had cool ideas for this story but they don't set them up well at all and the end result is a hodgepodge of unsatisfying story beats that feel like they could have had potential. My favorite example is Emmeryn's death. It's clear they wanted an authority figure to kill themselves because they thought it would be impactful to the player. The problem is that Emmeryn is barely a person to us and the context makes her sacrifice barely worthwhile. We hardly know Emmeryn by the time of her death. We know she's nice and had a rough childhood but we only ever hear secondhand accounts of that from Chrom and Lissa so it's hard to understand who she really is. In regards to her actual sacrifice, she did it to protect the Fire Emblem but we have no way of knowing why that's important. We're told it's powerful but not why or how. At least in the original Archanea games we know that Nyna giving it to a noble outside the kingdom of Archanea is symbolically significant but in FE13 we have no reason to belive that the Fire Emblem is anything more than a plot convenience. Because of this, Emmeryn is a one note character who died for what we can only assume to be a mcguffin which makes the whole ordeal ring hollow. Everything in this game's story falls apart when you analyze it for more than 2 seconds. The writers were banking on you thinking "huh that's neat" and not thinking any further.

This is the 3rd mainline game to include a world map and it's the only one where I have a problem with it. The fact you can go anywhere on the map regardless of what's happening in the story makes for such an extreme ludonarrative dissonance that I think it's shocking they didn't disable it for a few certain chapters. You can be trapped between 2 armies and on the brink of death but also you can travel to a different continent to pick up some weapons and grind if you want. This dissonance is exacerbated by the paralogues. There are 17 of these things and there's no set in stone time when you're meant to play them. These paralogues are literally just filler with every single one following the format of "bandits are attacking townspeople and someone who you can recruit is fighting them" which means you can just obliterate the story's already shoddy pacing whenever you feel like it.

After finishing this review and reading it over I realized I completely forgot to mention the whole time travel thing. Similarly to many other aspects of this game, I like the concept but abhor the execution. The idea of children going back in time to save their ruined world is so beyond cool but the game gives it practically no focus. How cool would it have been for first generation charcters to meet their children and be forced to reconcile with the people they'll become? For them to meet the people they failed to protect and consider how they should change to prevent this apocalyptic outcome from happening again? However, Lucina is literally the only future child with any involvement in the plot and even then she's sharing her screentime with Chrom, Robin, Flavia, and Basilio so we really don't get much in terms if her perspective. I would genuinely forget that she came from the future because FE13 barely mentions it during the 2nd and 3rd arcs. There's so much that could have been done with this concept but FE13 once again drops the ball.

Similarly to FE12, the characters in FE13 feel like walking tropes with no depth. The supports of this game were a drag to read through and I often found myself compelled to just skip them altogether. I don't want to sit through hours of 2 characters reciting their character quirks at each other. It doesn't help that %99 of the cast has no impact on the story, meaning that most players would feel no motivation to actually seek out these supports. That's not to say they're all bad. I quite liked Olivia's supports and Gerome was pretty cool too, but most of FE13's supports are painfully mediocre.

The last thing I wanted to touch on before getting to the gameplay was the character design. I think Kozaki does a great job of immediately conveying a character's personality which makes it even more irksome how the writing offers no depth beyond that. Let's take Severa for example. She has red twin tails and a constant grimace. You could not possibly get more straightforward when designing a tsundere. Given that they went out of their way to make her being a tsundere blatantly obvious you would think they would do something to subvert that trope with her writing but they just don't. They play the trope %100 straight and it just makes her feel lackluster as a character. This applies to nearly the entire cast. You can immediately gleam their personality via their design but the writing offers no further depth.

Now for the gameplay. FE13 is pathetically easy and once you can buy nosferatu tomes the game might as well play itself. All it takes is reclassing Robin to a dark mage and you've won. The design does nothing to disincentivize this kind of play and, in fact, encourages it. Horrible map design and ridiculous ambush spawns means that training Robin to the point of invulnerability is by far the most bearable way to beat this game. Even the typical anti turtling incentives become irrelevant. What am I missing by not going after side objectives? A character I won't use? A stat booster for a stat that's already capped? At least FE6 had the occasional good map but this game has absolutely nothing.

One thing that FE13's fans will boast about is the customizability of the units but I feel this doesn't matter when the path of least resistance is right there. Sure, you could choose the optimal mother for Morgan and spend hours training her in different classes to get the best possible skill set, but what difference does it make? Functionally, she'll just walk through maps one rounding every unit who approaches which is the exact same result as a Robin who's been halfheartedly reclassed into a dark mage. Putting any effort into the skill and class systems of this game is just overkill and a waste of time.

FE13's difficulties are so poorly balanced that a playthrough on the highest difficulty isn't much different from one on the lowest difficulty. The first 12 or so chapters are a Frederick and Robin solo and then once Robin has gained enough levels, it becomes a Robin solo no matter the difficulty. The first few maps are incredibly tedious on higher difficulties and it just makes playing them a pain rather than rewarding.

There's a lot to be said about the idea of "optimizing the fun out of a game" but when talking about that, I think there's 2 things that are important to consider. The first is how easy it is to optimize and the second is whether or not the game is even fun if you were to play it normally. FE13 does not fare well in either category. By now I've probably hammered in enough how it's pathetically easy to break this game but it's not like you're missing out by doing that. By playing normally you just get an incredibly boring game with barren map design.

One thing I've seen a ton during discussions of this game is "Awakening is a good game but a bad Fire Emblem game" and that's just not true. It compares terribly to past games and there are a lot of weird inconsistencies between FE13 and the original Archanea games but it's not like it suddenly becomes good when examining it in a void. Awakening is a mind-numbingly easy "strategy" game with a nonsensical plot and 2 dimensional characters. It's a shame that this game sold so well because it tells IntSys that they should continue with this direction.