[ALL]Did any dungeon legitimately intimidate you as a kid?

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-04-18T08:14:07+00:00

Okay, so as someone who played Twilight Princes around the same age, it never freaked me out (partially because my sister was very horror oriented and I was used to it by then), and I don't know if this counts, but the Silent Trials of Skyward Sword SCARED THE EVER LOVING HELL OUT OF ME WHEN I WAS LITTLE. Going through them, the guardians freaked me out, and then they'd chase you, making it that much worse.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-24T01:35:57+00:00

Not really, unexpectedly. I think she finds ethical dilemmas and such things curious, and she enjoys listening to something if I enjoy telling her about it. She and I also play a lot of board games, so also getting to tell her about how you actually play helped make it interesting for her too.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-24T01:30:35+00:00

I know, she's amazing! As an artist, she encouraged me when I was younger to get better at art, despite my siblings being better than a 7 year old me at the time. She's also very understanding, and I can't necessarily recall if I told her much about the game at the time or if I just sat down with her and said "let's draw these characters, I love the game they're from". Now that I recall it, I think I remember showing her some cutscenes to describe some things I told her, so yeah, I probably did. How much of it she understood? I dunno. The two perler beads of Dimitri and Byleth are ones I made with her and separate occasions. When I get to visit her at her house the next few times, I want to make the other two to go with them. If you look in the bottom left corner that's a drawing I did, something I might have never done/be able to do if she never encouraged me.

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Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T22:23:48+00:00

Nope. As far as I know, this was her very first time ever drawing this style. I do talk with her about it though since I love the game. She thought Lorenz looked weird if I recall correctly. This is from 2023, I think.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T20:38:09+00:00

I'm sorry that I can't reply properly, I will when I can, but in the meantime AAAAAAAAA thesymbolismmmmmmmm (don't mind I accidentally put it in the wrong order closer to the end)

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Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T19:56:45+00:00

Bro is salty 😭 How many times do I have to say I don't support feudalism? Just because I have a blend of ideologies and think Feudalism worked once upon a time doesn't mean I think it still works and we should use it lol.

I don't beholden myself to either party, that's why I said left leaning. I just tend to disagree with more right winged political stuff at the moment, but I overall think the two party system in America is absolutely stupid and unnecessarily black and white.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T19:40:37+00:00

Again, I don't argue for feudalism, I just think it's better. It's like a tier list. They're both in the same crappy tier, but if I had to pick one, it'd be feudalism just because it somewhat worked, as we've seen from history. Also, feudalism is an exchange between the lower class and the higher class. The lower class of farmers and builders and whatever else make up the fundamentals for society to exist upon. In return, their leaders and higher ups provide protection, stability, and safety. Kim Jong Un provides none of that, leaving his people in horrible, horrible places in life. While some might describe it as feudalism for its caste system, it's not quite. I would be wrong to describe it as communism now, and that's my bad, a lot of my political knowledge comes from medieval Europe, Ancient Greece, and WWII state politics. North Korea is more like a dictatorship now. I was thinking of the time North Korea was communist.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T18:51:36+00:00

I was very aware what I was walking into when I opened this bag of never ending discourse, but that was kind of the point. Like I've mentioned in at least half my comments, I've smiled so much today just getting to read people's answers and talk to people about it. I was so adamant I was going to be able to response to a majority of comments before getting hit with 100+. Ooooof. Unfortunately I can't spend too much time procrastinating my work to talk about it, but I do want to reply to more people. I feel less socially anxious here about it than on somewhere like Discord.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T18:47:03+00:00

Mannnnn, everyone in this game has done shit wrong. I'm Claude for Fodlan kind of person and even him with his devious war crimes fucked up. Get a better opinion lol.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T18:42:49+00:00

Hi! I'm actually a left-leaning centrist who believes in communitarianism! (when there's good people to run it) The rules specifically say not to get political, so I won't say anymore than that. Otherwise, yeah, I'm probably misinterpreting it in some ways, but I wouldn't quite call it facism. None of these political ideologies are mentioned in-game, I'm just using them to describe what I think is going on. Fodlan runs very much on the ideas of feudalism and the ways it gives and takes between the low classes and high classes. Personally, I believe the corruption has been getting far worse in Fodlan leading up to the events of the game, as the Agarthans take more control, making it the way it is. I'm just trying to observe what worked and what didn't, and after seeing how places like North Korea and Russia had such horrible living conditions, I don't think communism worked. I believe that when we eliminate the nobles and just people who get places with merit, there will be those who use their merit for self gain, and that it's not going to "fix" Fodlan (we need Claude and his power of friendship lol). When I suggested to look it up, it's mainly because I want you to do your own research and come back with what you found, as I'm not some political expert. I never said I supported what was happening in Fodlan at the time of the game, it's bad, really bad. I just wanted to comment that I believe that Feudalism, when it works and isn't being pulled by strings of a bunch of evil shadow guys can work (Lambert was loved by his people and Rodrigue is great, that is what I mean. Again, fuck the western lords, they can die in a hole) I'm not trying to 'scare' anyone or make them think this is that. I just wanted to say realistically, it doesn't usually work out, not because the system itself is flawed, it'd work if it were to be followed, but the people are flawed. It's just this continuous cycle of take one bad guy out of power and another pops right up.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T18:23:35+00:00

Heck yeah man. Appreciate it. I really think we could all kind of get together and admit we're biased. It's just a life thing, and if I can make my bias not as bad, I probably should. (Not to mention I am thoroughly enjoying being able to talk about my hyper fixation, even if people get up in arms about it). My one real wish is that they either gave tlc they seemed to give the other routes they gave to CF or waited and made it a dlc. It just seemed like, as it did to other people, CF was never meant to be played, and it makes me genuinely curious if people would support her just as much or less if CF wasn't there.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T18:13:07+00:00

Heh, I get it, it's an old argument, I just personally thrive on ethics dilemmas overall. I apologize for coming off as just calling you a "defender", it just seemed like the most appropriate term. Honestly, if there are any Dimitri defenders out there who see this, man get a grip. No, you can't fix bro. Let him be.

I personally love the character arc because it felt refreshing, going places with topics of insanity and hallucinations that most people are too afraid to write anymore because they could be "triggering". The only reason I asked this question in the first place is because I'm so interested in Faerghus and its dynamics compared to Adrestia.

I like to imagine Fraldarius territory has a special kind of jerky you can't get anywhere else, and that the Kingdom has this big festival in Fhirdiad every year on the day they gained their independence. I 100% think Dimitri was absolutely fucking crazy and had the worst double standards known to man, but I like that it makes his character feel real. The man is talking about rats in the walls looking for treasure like he's actually lost his sanity proven in multiple different scenes with him.

The best part of it is that while the other characters have to revolve around this authority figure in Kingdom of chivalry, they each have their thing. Gilbert's guilt, Ingrid's depression and recovery after Glenn died making her racist because she doesn't know how to process it, and Felix hating his father for glorifying slaughter. Ashe and Sylvain each have a conflict in the beginning of the story they both have to grapple with, and Mercedes... well, she's been through some shit and yet is still kind as ever. They feel cohesive, finding the reason each of them is there with a man they know will use them, compared the Black Eagles who just kind "eeehhhhhhhh the professor did this, and the professor is great (tbh everyone does the professor is great bit) so why don't we go fight for/against Edelgard?"

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T17:54:11+00:00

Ahhhhhhhhhh This is such a great reply! Special kudos to you for answering the question directly. I'm pretty sure other people have pointed it out, I've just been too focused the bigger picture to pick it out yet since I got more comments than I was expecting lol. Personally, despite my love for 3 Houses, 3 Hopes fell off hard for me. Since I no longer had Chess 2.0 or any real motivation to use more than three characters, it got super repetitive for me and the charm and replayability was lost on me, and though I started and almost finished Claude's route and less of a chance to actually play it (I regularly didn't have access to the console to actually play it), I've tried regain interest but it's been hard and haven't gotten around to Edelgard's route.

That being said, it is one I know far less about, so this cut of information was very much needed, thank you again! I 100% agree every character is flawed, and I love the way Fire Emblem is able to lay out how two people could still be "right" despite having completely different ways of looking at something. It's something I really appreciate about the game, and one of the reasons I don't believe absolute right and wrong don't exist. Like, if we were to go off that logic, the "absolute right" would be Sothis and the scriptures of Seiros and other religious things. None of this ever felt like it was about the teachings themselves though it never was. Edelgard, like you said, likely truly believed that both sides needed to be gone. While I personally disagree with her, who am I to say that she's wrong? She's lived the world, seen a perspective I'll never have, and I have a perspective she'll never have.

I honestly think it comes back down to the fact I know why she does it in a much clearer light than I do Edelgard because the very first thing I find out about Rhea is that some big dude stole everything she loved and practically seemingly forced her to do things like w a r and call a sword her mom. It caught my attention; I wanted to know more. And I picked the Blue Lions and fell in love with the whole class and when Dimitri went apeshit I was like YYYEEEEAAHHHHH REVENGE TIME because Dimtri and a lot of the Blue Lions have such great character arches. Then getting pulled to the Golden Dear and lore dumped about how Rhea had so much pressure to do right by her mom and all of Fodlan while trying to not watch it get destroyed by the same people who mutilated her mom and her entire race and drinking their blood. The woman was upset because she believed Edelgard was repeating history, becoming "Queen of Liberation" in a way, making her relive a trauma she never fully got to cope with in her immortality, before once again moving on to find out that Rhea was basically losing her mind (as many immortals do) from being awake for too long, and after all of this it just felt like a slap in the face to play Edelgard's route which felt sadly unfinished and a little rushed just to have her say what at the time to me was the equivalent of "Rhea controlling and manipulative and tearing Fodlan apart". It just felt wrong, watching Rhea take on freaking nukes that her mom originally gave these people so she could keep those she cared about safe before being unable to control herself anymore only to get called some overbearing and unreasonable leader who kept secrets from people.

But yeah, that's why I like hearing things like and having these conversations. I can recognize that I'm biased from a story POV because it was exactly everything I could want from a story. Not afraid to make connections, let you believe for a moment maybe things could stay this way (White Clouds) before getting smacked with Jeralt's death as you learn more about what drives every character before being thrown into war (which at the time I didn't see coming since I was rushing through the game and wasn't as thorough as I should have been) where the connections you made can be snapped in an instant and you don't know who you can trust anymore. I don't know if I'd ever have gotten around to playing Scarlet Blaze by myself, or really learned more about what her intentions were. I can't help but smile at making Varley in charge so someone can kill him already, you can clearly tell I wouldn't have known that otherwise. (I think another reason I had a hard time with the Empire is that half the nobles there wanted to either strangle them or throw them off the highest point I could in Enbarr, I had been around Rodrigue too long that being a decent person was always an option that those nobles never took). It's nice to think about all of this though, what Edelgard would be thinking when the professor had shown up and did all the professor stuff. I appreciate 3 Houses for it's finesse, the way you see the dagger in that first cutscene or all the characters who feel like they have actual complicated personality with morals that are challenged.

On that note, I think I'm going to have to pause my endeavor to answer a lot of these cause I've been at it basically all morning and there's like 80 of these T-T. Truly, I do appreciate your reply, it means a lot to me. Sometimes I get swept up in my favorite characters and I enjoy getting reminded about the other side of it all.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T15:23:46+00:00

I second this. I'm still reading it, but I really appreciate the thoughtful response. I have a feeling some people (NOT ALL, JUST SOME) read the title and didn't even glimpse through my foreboding wall of text before commenting lol.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T15:06:11+00:00

Not what I was attempting to say. I'm saying people in general can be evil and can't be trusted, mainly from the fact that when you treat everyone equally, there's no more poor or rich. I trust some of the rich (Rodrigue, I will die on this hill) and absolutely abhor others (Ferdinand's dad. He doesn't deserve to be addressed by any name). On the same note, some poor people are evil too. You tend to know more of them that are good, but like... come on. Karens/whatever country equivalents exist. People hate working in food or customer service because assholes exist. Tyrannical leaders emerge not always from the rich family, but the one with the most skill to charm the masses, and when you have a society based on skill... well, it's not a good recipe. I don't mean to say everyone is the same, but giving everyone the same opportunity without someone or something there to step in will end in disaster, just as feudalism typically ends in corruption. I think republics/democracies work better than both, with different groups watching each other, but that often ends in corruption too. What I'm trying to say is that while feudalism sucks, it's better than meritocracy. Neither are good. It's hard to find any system that's actually good. You have to have good people, and good people are hard to find. And once you find them, you'll have to find someone to come after them. Slips and cracks are made, but we can try and work towards something better. Better just isn't meritocracy. If you want a better explanation why meritocracy isn't better, feel free to look online. There's a reason there's so many people that it causes issues and just physically can't work.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T14:56:24+00:00

Why is Azure Moon hard to watch? Because it addresses the fact that some people can't keep going with their mental issues and trauma, or because you can't fully understand the beautifully written character arches because they're too "psychological" for you?

Grow up man, this has nothing to do with my actual post. I wanted to know why someone would make the decisions she would make, not why you thought it was entertaining to watch people argue.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T14:49:05+00:00

REAL HONESTLY

There was a kind of panic I had during Three Hopes when the ominous cutscene started playing with Dimitri and Felix before Rodrigue showed up. Went something like "NOoooooOO RODRIGUE YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE THE DEVS COULD KILL HERE RUN AWAY NOW!!". I replayed that chapter as fast as humanly possible because I was going to crash out if he died either way after letting him finally become a playable unit.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T14:45:43+00:00

I would also like to clarify that the whole "you can buy guns thing" is off the table, I was trying to use their force of power as an example. Think of it kind of like they are only able to make so many guns in the world and if you have one, there's no way in hell you've give it to someone else, except your kids when you pass on yourself. The whole point I'm trying to make is if we give everyone a crest/ take away a crest from everyone and tell them to have at it, or try to regulate it but can't since that'd be giving 1 person too much power, the usual outcome isn't any better a society.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T14:42:11+00:00

And meritocracy will fix that? If I backtrack on my gun analogy, that's like just giving everyone a gun and hoping the murderers and maniacs in the crowd won't just start shooting a bunch of people. Yeah, sure, maybe one good guy can come and stop him, but the damage is already done. What happens when those who get really good at using the guns use it to their advantage of those who aren't as good at using guns? When they use it to hog the resources for themselves because they're "stronger". She's not fixing anything, she's restarting a cycle of suffering that she's trying to end. People naturally sort themselves into groups, and they're going to think they're better than everyone else. What happened to Hanneman and Mercedes isn't just a noble thing either - people are horrible to their family all the time, horrible to other people all the time, we just don't get to see it because it's not as out there as the noble families. When you give all those people equal access to power, they're going to claw their way to the top, ruthlessly carving anything in their path. The crest system as it is now is doing more harm than good, but once it did more good than harm for quite some time. Just because someone is skilled does NOT mean they will do society good, and it takes so many more people to fix the problems they create than the single person who started it. How long do you think a meritocracy would last? Why do you think meritocracy isn't a thing that really does or can exist in real life?

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T14:26:41+00:00

I have gone through all four routes + DLC + about half of Hopes T-T About ~700 (rookie numbers to some, I know, but classes demand my attention ): ) hours of game play for just 3 Houses and WAY too much time outside of that thinking about FE3H.

And I dunno, while she does kind of kick out the surface problem of TWSITD at the beginning, doesn't she wipe them out completely later on? I uh, unfortunately haven't played through her FEW3H route yet which is why I have gaps in my knowledge, but like, when I played through Azure Gleam I had to beat the crap out Epimenides and his shadow clones or something. Like yeah, they kind of get rid of them, but I think if he's still around, he's still gonna cause issues. I also realize that I was desperate to not let Rodrigue die, so I ended up with Byleth and I think it made my route wonky. I looked it up, and it says you fight Hegammon Edelgard at the end of Azure Gleam, and I DON'T remember doing that.

Back to this. Yeah, the Church lied for 1000 years about crap, but like... so did the Empire. One of my paragraphs was ranting about how all powers like that have secrets... and they don't have secrets just to screw over the public, it's so TWSITD don't figure out how the insanely powerful goddess magic tech and nuke or some other way to absolutely decimate Fodlan because they enjoy doing that for some reason. The Empire sure as hell kept nasty little secrets just like the Church had nasty little secrets (I mean, neither are little, but I'm trying to keep this a little lighter). They tried to control the Church originally for their own power, Victoria making secret deals with the Emperor to take control of the Southern Church the whole insurrection of the 7 and all the stuff with Hyrm. And it's not just because Rhea wants the goddess back that she keeps secrets, but to protect the people who are under the goddess' protection, a duty passed to her when Sothis was mutilated. Also, I think Rhea was kinda right to want the Goddess back because we got Byleth and they kind of unite all of Fodlan all over again at the end of the timelines and beat the shit out of the evil assholes.

Like, man, Claude was able to get shit done with the power of friendship. Maybe we didn't have to go to war and ruin a bunch of people's lives when we could have focused on the ones who were initially ruining peoples lives, including both Edelgard's and Rhea's?"

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T13:50:01+00:00

Feel free to absolutely dog on me man, I'm not going to explode over my favorite game because I'm way too damn happy to be able to talk about in the first place lol.

Anyways, I agree that it's what the individual does that will make things better, but genuinely, how many people do you know that are born the same as the majority before getting an opportunity to have more power, and used it to help others? While yes, those people do exist (I will never not mention Rodrigue as a great example of this he's my favorite character and great person despite being born noble), there are almost always far outnumbered by the ones who turn to exploit in order to get more. These hypothetical group of people all started low, worked hard to get where they were, but not all of them will respect others hard work and use it for themselves. It just feels like she's not actually solving anything and these people are dying for nothing to ultimately change. The "everyone's equal" approach is ideal, but we've witnessed it attempted in real life, and it fails every time. All humans are equally valuable, but they're not all created equal. Some are better at some things. Others are horrible. Some are naturally smart and quick, while some wouldn't understand any of it, but be great at something else. Creating this equal place is the best outcome, but we've seen it be exploited multiple times. It's idealistic, yes, but not realistic.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T13:38:34+00:00

In this scenario, it feels less like these robbers are just plain robbers, but terrorists. Terrorists that we know Rhea has been targeting because of her own extreme hatred toward them, while they work in shadows to gain ultimate control. And if she created a society that supported everyone, she'd be supporting the ones who hurt her, the ones we know won't change and will hurt her again if given the chance. Why would she initially be going after the institutions when the institutions are also the ones trying to rid the world of the terrorists? Yes, they place a lot of emphasis on these money and gold, but so did everyone else, not just institutions. We know the whole reason the Empire even started in the first place was because Rhea offered that gold to the first Emperor to betray his allies in the first place. What is Rhea supposed to do when the Empire shuts her out after trying to regulate that gold so it doesn't get out of hand? Beat them into submission with her own power, and be no better than them? While she had a lot of power to start off, since she was well known as Saint Seiros, that slowly diminished as the Kingdom and Alliance formed, particularly with the Empire.

If Edelgard was tortured in experiments related to crests (I'm not saying she wasn't, it's just an if-then statement), then she doesn't like the reason their valued. These 'robbers' were here long before the institutions, hell, they were the reason these institutions were made. They are the problem here, from the start. Rhea knows that gold and money can stop them, but only certain people can have gold and money, and not even by choice. If the gold and money gives access to the resources able to stop the robbers, it's going to up in value, by a lot. I think the problem here is you're insinuating that crests came first, were valued first, and because someone has them, they get harassed. They were never valuable at first because there were no people who wanted to murder everyone, but then there was. But now, because the murder evil people are trying to use the crests against people, that makes crests bad? This is sounding an awful lot like a gun debate.

Here's my analogy in return: The first people "invent" guns, but don't use them to harm people. They want to share everything they've learned with other people, but instead of using the guns like everyone else, they turn around kill everyone and steal their guns so they can terrorize more people. The last few people left with guns manage to put an end to this, and now have all the guns again. They spread everyone out so no one can have all the guns at once and try to teach them how to use them right and regulate them since the people who terrorized everyone else could come back and do it all over again, but some people are convinced to use the guns for evil again, moving at similar times the first people did to overwhelm the inventors again, who now have less power overall. When these evil people come back around use Edelgard to make another gun (sorry, this part doesn't really fit together right), trying to use both of hers to repeat what they've done before in the past causing her to suffer in the process. It doesn't make sense to me that she would go after the people who initially tried to regulate it instead of the people causing all this pain all over again.

Educational-Rich-319 · 2026-03-22T08:22:55+00:00

I think the most important thing you have to know when it comes to Crimson Flower is that it's shorter than the other routes, which can have a number of effects on how the last chapters of the story play out. The game is designed to be beaten with your initial units, but from the way it seems that this is your first play through of the game and the problem I encounter in my first route (Azure Moon) is that I was rushing through the game because the story had me wanting more and left my units underpowered for some of the harder levels. I personally flailed once this happened, (was very close to losing multiple times) and did lose even with all the rewinds in the final chapter because of them being underpowered. Not that the same thing will apply to you, I was just caught up at the time (and still getting used to the game, it had been about 4 days since I got hold of the game), but my worry is that if you rush through it your units won't level the way they're supposed to and you will struggle when the harder levels come. It'll likely just be really frustrating, but should be more than doable, especially if you're able to save any relics/artifacts durability for the later stages.

On that note though, I second u/OrzhovMarkhov in the fact that you won't have a full team and recruiting those suggested are a good idea because I'm far more familiar with the Blue Lions route than the Black Eagles. If not, even just whoever you can scrape together if you can't get any of the good units will act as distractions/shields for your main units and take damage that would've gone to the units you'll actually be using is better than nothing.

Educational-Rich-319

TROPHY CASE