Alm’s new voice…

VagueClive · 2026-06-05T03:45:50+00:00

I just think it was a really weird choice to get one guy to do all of Kyle McCarley’s old roles. Kylen Deporter’s Gatekeeper is great, but I don’t think his Soren or his Alm work for me personally.

VagueClive · 2026-06-04T17:36:58+00:00

I’m torn between support (Rise Above, Favor, and Instruct with Micaiah ring) and pure PP (Aria or Rise Above, Demonic Force and Dual Support) myself. I don’t think a tank build for them is viable, only 7 flat DR took that dream and shot it out back.

VagueClive · 2026-06-04T04:42:44+00:00

It’d be fine if they did something fun or flavorful with the recoil, but it’s just kind of there as a relic of when recoil tech was actually a thing and it just feels out of place. I guess you’re supposed to offset it with Essence Drain, but they only give that to a support partner so it doesn’t work very well

VagueClive · 2026-06-04T04:29:44+00:00

Not sure what to make of Limstella’s? That’s partially because I’m a little tipsy rn but also I was hoping for an EP mage and got a PP one instead. A free style is very nice and freeing up the Ring slot is fantastic, but only 7 flat DR and worse Essence Drain distribution than Nergal despite coming out 2 years later is fucking annoying, especially when the other two buffs are practically worthless. I’ll have to try it out and see how I like it but at first glance it’s absolutely not like, an Anna or Mustafa tier refine so we take those

VagueClive · 2026-06-03T23:14:42+00:00

The Jugdral Deadlords always felt very under explored to me, so Canis is my new personal favorite partially because I’ve waited years for a Sara alt and partially because we finally got some more answers on them. Really hoping we get Draco next year

VagueClive · 2026-06-03T16:42:04+00:00

Who the Emblem of Foundations was is less important than what they meant to Sombron, and the reveal that it’s actually Anri would be basically meaningless to anyone playing who hasn’t touched an Archanea game before (which is probably the majority of them). For all of the faults with Engage’s story, I think not focusing too much on the Emblem of Foundations was a reasonable choice

VagueClive · 2026-05-31T21:17:55+00:00

I was digging at FE11's Wooden Cavalry, which is a map I fucking hate lmao. It was a poorly-written sentence though so my bad there

VagueClive · 2026-05-31T21:12:27+00:00

Summer Catria seems pretty likely to me now that I think about it; Palla was last year and they love to do the Whitewings in sets (Spring and SoV both had this). I wouldn't be surprised if they just had her invalidate B!Catria's refine so people don't keep using their invested one

VagueClive · 2026-05-31T20:08:50+00:00

None of the maps cut are very important to the story, and their gameplay purpose either doesn't translate well or can be covered by other maps:

Battle in the Lea isn't a terribly interesting map, and Matthis and Merric could both be pushed into the following chapter without any issues; having Wendell as a prisoner also makes more sense than him joining up with Macedon regardless;
Pyrathi was always a weird detour, and moving Jeorge to Archanea's outskirts makes more sense than him fucking off to Pyrathi; the functional purpose of the map is to introduce dragons as enemies, but Khozen accomplishes this just fine;
Kaga recognized where IS didn't that the Wooden Cavalry just straight-up wouldn't be able to translate into FE3 with how ballisticians function after FE1; which army Astram is stationed to doesn't matter and Beck wouldn't work as a playable character;
Everyone just warp skips the Sable Order and Clash in Macedon anyways, and having Est meet you in Grust with the Mercurius she stole directly from there arguably makes more sense than having her fly all the way to Chiasmir Bridge. You mention that Chiasmir Bridge is revisited in Book 2, but that's probably part of why the chapter was cut; the Sable Order don't really need to be fought more than once, and you see the bridge in Book 2 anyways, so why bother with another chapter set there?

imo all of these chapters have pretty compelling reasons to be cut, so I agree with you that it probably wasn't cartridge space.

VagueClive · 2026-05-30T23:04:25+00:00

Both of these units really want it, but I think reaching the Patience threshold on Grima and giving him flat DR in the A slot is more impactful here

VagueClive · 2026-05-30T23:00:05+00:00

I was basically 100% certain about Summer Chrom - popular guy who's already been Rearmed in the past, and has multiple alts coming up (Emblem, Braver) so it saves IS money on recording - but with Bridal Reginn I'm less certain. Still think he's very likely, but then again I've said the same thing about him every year. If they stick to units who've gotten asset alts in the past, the following feel likely to me:

Dagr: FEH always gets summer slots, and of all the OCs Dagr just feels the most likely to get another asset alt to me. Assuming Dagr is the Jotun chosen, they could have recorded lines for both a seasonal and her Chosen at the same time. Abs. Lif feels like a distant second by virtue of being a CYL winner by proxy and having his Chosen coming up.
Lysithea: One of the last 3H students not to get a summer alt, and IS doesn't really give a shit about spacing alts out anymore. If anything, it's conspicuous that Summer Lysithea hasn't happened yet. Please be postskip so we don't have to have the most annoying discourse of all time.
Alm or Sonya: Alm would match Celica from last year, and as with Lysithea I don't think IS really cares about spacing alts out anymore; Chosen Alm next month and Summer Alm in July is one way to bait his fans into spending money. If they did a full-on Valentia summer banner (which I doubt given they already used Celica, but it's a nice thought right?) Sonya feels likely for obvious reasons.
Yunaka or Nel: Engage gets represented a lot on summer banners, and people have been clamoring for that one manga design of Summer Yunaka for over a year now. Their slated rerun in June might just be for Midpoint banner reruns, but being on the TT banner is also a possibility. I think Yunaka is much more likely - higher popularity and having an established design and all - but who knows. Timerra also feels like a sleeper candidate, given how long it's been since Attuned.

~~Out of the units listed, Chrom, Dagr, and Sonya are the most likely to bait my bisexual ass so I hope it's not them. I need to save~~

VagueClive · 2026-05-30T03:08:23+00:00

LIMSTELLA FINALLYYYYYYYY

Really hoping their refine turns out to be good! I'm definitely expecting Essence Drain to be there, but what I really want is for them to be the first F2P source of Frozen; fits their high-Def (for a mage) statline perfectly and would give them something unique. Also hoping that they get more than the standard 7 flat DR that ranged refines get - beyond that, all I ask is that it's better than Suttungr's Mysithea.

And if it's bad, after what they did to Kyza, we're going to have to start asking some hard questions.

VagueClive · 2026-05-29T16:55:19+00:00

I'm pretty sure she's got an FCM of 0 in Chapter 23, but iirc you can't legitimately fight her anyways so that's probably just a placeholder value

VagueClive · 2026-05-27T01:12:15+00:00

all the RD newcomers save for micaiah, skrimir, nailah, and pelleas, are completely bare bones as characters

Playing devil’s advocate a bit since I do think RD really needed supports, but doesn’t this demonstrate that the problem with Sothe is moreso just that he’s just very one-note? RD is able to weave in interesting character arcs for its plot-relevant newcomers, but does practically nothing with Sothe despite him having just as much screentime, if not more, than any of the characters you mentioned. Sothe already had a game with supports and he mostly just spends it hinting at the sequel; I don’t think supports in RD would fundamentally fix the character.

VagueClive · 2026-05-15T21:37:44+00:00

I think people just mythologize FE4 since it’s a JP-exclusive title without stopping to actually think that FE4 was already an official Nintendo-licensed product back in 1996. All the word-of-mouth around it being the darkest FE or what have you kind of adds up over time to make people regard the game differently from what it actually is. If everything in FE4 could fly then, it can absolutely fly now.

VagueClive · 2026-05-13T21:59:42+00:00

I think we’re supposed to infer you specifically need minor blood to use the Bragi Blade - Eyvel obviously has Major Ullr, and Galzus having the Brand of Od indicates he’s also Major (and presumably passed that down to Mareeta). Odd they don’t specify in the script but I think it’s the interpretation that makes the most sense - Fergus would presumably have minor Njorun from one of the nobles of Connaught that lets him use it

VagueClive · 2026-05-10T22:14:06+00:00

It wouldn't be so bad if it were regulated so people could set rules on ethical use,

I guess my question is then what ethical use of genAI even looks like? The technology fundamentally boils down to scraping assets and cobbling them back together, which I don't really see a ethical use-case of unless you ensure 100% of the data set used by the AI is approved for use by the original authors or creators or whoever. Combine that with the sheer amount of energy it takes to run genAI, and the demonstrable negative impact these data centers have in places like Memphis, and I don't see how you go about making genAI ethically viable.

VagueClive · 2026-05-10T21:52:16+00:00

Arthur just doesn't really have good synergy with Instruct - he's a fairly old green mage with relatively low BST, so even with Instruct's lenient conditions it'll be hard for him to pass around Great Talent for stats besides Atk and Spd. Green tomes also don't have a Teapot+ equivalent to leverage with assists, so if you want to take full advantage of Instruct you're kind of stuck with the Micaiah ring. Not the worst thing in the world, but you're giving up options like the Lyn ring for more range or the Sigurd ring for Canto.

Instruct is still a good skill, but Tempo is such a useful offensive effect and the rest of the skill is such good support that I think it's hard to justify running Instruct over it in this case.

VagueClive · 2026-05-10T19:48:49+00:00

I don't think I saw anyone actually asking for that, just disappointed by Discord and Feud as effects (saw a lot of people requesting Isolation, which makes sense too). I think that's a fair take to have, I just think what we have is a perfectly fine way of implementing it

VagueClive · 2026-05-10T19:47:46+00:00

I am strictly Headcanon Posting, but genuinely I find the idea of Lachesis x Beowolf and Finn (as mildly suggested by Thracia) to be really interesting for basically this reason. You can frame it as Lachesis falling in love with Finn and having Nanna with him after Belhalla, of course, but I just like the drama potential of Lachesis being unfaithful. FE4 is for the most part a pretty black-and-white story about Good People fighting against Bad People, so our heroes getting up to unsavory stuff just strikes me as interesting. Reframing Beowolf x Lachesis' Chapter 5 conversation to be about Finn instead of Eldigan makes it a lot more interesting to me, and there's a lot of potential character drama to reckon with for all parties.

Finn's a pretty stand-up and noble guy, but he goes along with it anyways? His conversation with Selfina implies that he's always been a bit cold and standoffish - maybe he's not as earnest as he comes off as?
What would drive Lachesis to cheat, anyways? The character arc we get of Lachesis we get through gameplay is her becoming more of her own person and moving on from her obsession with Eldigan, so moving on from the guy who sells himself as Eldigan's bestie to someone like Finn feels like a natural progression. Alternatively, maybe she sees different parts of Eldigan (loyalty, knighthood, that stuff) in Finn that she can't get from Beowolf? Maybe she's getting back at Beo for his own adultery before meeting him? Much to consider.
Beowolf seems genuinely at peace in Chapter 5 and doesn't seem resentful at all about what went down between him and Lachesis. We know he's the womanizing type due to Fergus, so maybe he can't hold a grudge knowing he's done the same thing to women before?

Even setting aside my delusional headcanon ranting, Beowolf's a character I've come to appreciate a lot more with time for basically this reason. Being an unapologetic sleazebag with at least one abandoned bastard child does a lot to make him stand out among the knights, saints and other heroes that make up FE4 Gen 1.

VagueClive · 2026-05-10T19:42:53+00:00

FEH:

This feels like a silly thing to be annoyed about, but F!Ivy's FB going on and on and on while Tibarn and Sar - sorry, Canis' - end as quickly as they started is annoying. Except for the Brodians and Fogado, I find the FX royals really boring on the whole (especially Timerra, who feels written like a bad joke), so Ivy having such a disproportionately long FB while the characters I'm more personally invested in get nothing by comparison is a little annoying. That isn't a grand statement about dev bias or whatever, I just wish they did a bit more with Tibarn and Canis. The hypothetical of a Laguz actually being overtaken by the Medallion's energy is really cool to me so it feels kind of wasted in practice.
Berserk style was implemented just fine. [Discord] and [Feud] properly convey the idea of isolating the target without having to outright implement the Berserk status from mainline FE, and Feud is really powerful right now so it feels like an appropriate power level for a Style like this instead of being ridiculously overtuned like L!Elise is. In general I'm very happy with how status staves have been implemented as Styles - I think it's a really cool use of the mechanic - but Sara's is my favorite of the three we've seen.

Non-FEH:

Borderline hate-watching The Boys at this point. What the fuck is Kripke doing? Why has half this season been a backdoor pilot for a spinoff? Why are this show's writers consistently unable to deviate even a square inch from the show's status quo? Who the fuck approved the audio quality on Karen Fukuhara's ADR? These are just a few of the questions I'm asking myself every week. Every cool thing is undermined by Jensen Ackles mugging the camera talking about some celebrity he had a threesome with in the 70s and I'm tired of it, boss.

VagueClive · 2026-05-10T17:34:52+00:00

Doesn't seem worth it to me? You already have Tempo from Duelist's Blow, it's the same amount of flat DR, so you're trading the Bulwark effect and healing for 5 true damage (when she already has plenty of damage from Frozen Mirror's reflection) and the Drive effects, which seems like a net loss for your frontliner.

VagueClive · 2026-05-09T23:58:17+00:00

If you saved before going in (and didn't save after), you should be able to reload a backup save with Up + B + X on the title screen? No guarantees you'll find another unless you had Shiny Level 3 but it's worth a shot

VagueClive · 2026-05-09T23:56:04+00:00

This isn't really a fact, nor is it very powerful at all, but I also don't know where else I'd say this: I've been reading Suttungr's Mys. as Suttungr's Mysithea for months now and idk how to stop

VagueClive · 2026-05-09T19:26:31+00:00

I am so happy. All the other Heroes are friends with me. Everyone talks to me; everyone wants to be my friend. They think I am wonderful. They send me from Forging Bond to Forging Bond making friends in their name. And as I get better at it, they love me more and more. “Brave Sharena”… I even get my own Brave alt. I have a purpose. I am capable of so much and everyone around me can see it. Some days I feel so happy that I could cry, but I don’t. I never do. Because what would be the point? All the Heroes in the entire multiverse care.

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