i am a bit conflicted over this game.

on one hand, i love it. the cast is the best one in any fire emblem game so far, the supports are really fun and i'm especially glad they were voiced, as well as literally anything else in the game. divine pulse is a nice addition and much better than milas divine wheel. unit customization has never been this good before. the three house leaders are amazing characters and especially dimitri has to be one of my all time favourite fire emblem characters, heck maybe even THE favourite. the maps are pretty decent, nothing i'm too positive nor negative about. the story itself is good as well.

but-- the game really drags. i cannot recommend playing all four routes after one another, it was the worst mistake in my entire gaming history. route one was fun! i enjoyed it a lot and i loved the game. even route two was nice, getting to see a different side of the story and this time fully understanding combat from the start, so i've been doing better than before. but once i started the third route, i was getting tired of it. the same first few chapters once more. and even when reaching the timeskip, it still felt like i was just doing a replay of my second playthrough. the silver snow route especially is my least favourite and just shouldn't have been a thing. it wasn't worth it, just for this one final boss that was different and the little extra snippets of lore. they really could've just put that plot twist in claudes route and called it a day.

as of writing this, i haven't finished edelgards route yet. i have enough selfrespect to not touch the game for a while and instead play some other games. i love the game and it has some of the highest highs in the franchise, but by god, i'm really burnt out on it--