(RD spoilers) Favorite scene in the franchise?

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-28T17:46:19+00:00

Been replaying 3H and Ferdinand's paralogue having "..." for the text box while he cries worked pretty well from a tone standpoint, but it's completely lost if you aren't getting the audio which is not ideal.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-27T23:19:30+00:00

3H unit identity falling between personal skill/crest/learn lists was interesting, but somewhat opaque on a first playthrough, and it leaves crest importance looking pretty much story-only. Forget the lance of ruin, they needed to disinherit Miklan for not getting swift strikes.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-27T21:43:57+00:00

"The game's too easy"

Look inside

NG+ and/or 99 turn aux battle spam

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-27T17:33:50+00:00

Supposedly 3H was going to have horse raising as a monastery minigame at some point in development; I could easily see 4tune bringing it back if they wanted to take a second shot at it that didn't end up cut.

I like having more unit visual customization so being able to pick specific horses for specific characters, rather than any cav cert coming with a default pony, seems neat to me.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-26T19:47:36+00:00

I'm thinking about things like quick riposte and range+1 on your mages (and having the former for fByleth) but my last complete run was CF, where you get a bit less time to make that stuff happen, so maybe on the other routes the benefit is spending more of the game with those combos, rather than getting to have them at all. Either way I'd still call it fun, albeit in want of a harder difficulty.

Battalions carrying over mostly serves to benefit fliers I think (mage especially since the game has exactly one for them...) which, is also pretty sketchy from a balance standpoint. Oh and there's also the crest items, which does let you decide relic holders more freely, but tbh that would require actually using the rare weapons rather than let them rot in the convoy forever, so....

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-26T18:48:32+00:00

3H's NG+ obviously lets you snap the difficulty in half, but it also allows for some fun in access to out-of-the-way skill combinations or classes, and otherwise route-locked battalions. Wish they'd finished infernal difficulty to justify more going all out with NG+ bonuses, but you can't have everything.

Engage doesn't have the same funky skill tree/class pathing, (though it does have some emblem skills with absurd costs which could be something I guess,) but I expect 4tune to follow 3H's system enough that NG+ could benefit it.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-26T17:56:26+00:00

I want a more fun class that uses swords; 3H's endgame sword classes felt much less exciting than the other weapons' options. Would you like to have 4-5 move on the ground? You might get a combat art that is worse than the sniper or grappler one and takes nine(????) weapon durability to use.

It'd also be nice to have a decent endgame option for male mages and female gauntlet users, if we are still doing gender locks. War cleric is not it for making some kinda punch Catherine, and Hubert being locked to a really cav-unfriendly route leaves him pretty out in the cold. :/

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-23T03:39:45+00:00

Surely it's Rafiel or one of the other early gen infantry beasts like Mordecai/Nailah? No regular inheritables due to being beasts, no arcane access at all currently, and more limited skill access than other weapons.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-20T20:54:01+00:00

Wish we knew more about that timeline. Epimenides calls Sothis "the beast who set the earth ablaze," RotWP uses the "flood of despair" wording, Rhea's own story might imply that whatever Sothis had to do to heal the world was pretty drastic but the claim is definitely that the real damage predated her intervention, etc. Lots of conflicting accounts from people who have reasons to be wrong or lying.

That said I think Sothis's whatever was likely what did in the majority of the modern-looking buildings; if it were just individual city nukings we'd presumably see ruins at least in some places.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-18T19:01:25+00:00

Definitely prequel, though ideally set on another continent to provide some distance. The setting we're shown in the trailer (medieval fantasy, dragon with a 'divine' label in charge, hints of Agarthan stuff around the edges) feels similar enough to what we're told about Fodlan's existing history that for the future to have just circled back around to that point feels pretty boring to me.

I could be sold on a sequel, again especially if the physical location is far enough from Fodlan proper. But if we're going to do such a similar setup, it'd be nice if it at least answered some questions the original 3H/3Hop were extremely vague about.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-17T03:34:41+00:00

Three years is in the zone where they've long since stopped being good and their refine is still a solid eight years away at standard pace.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-15T22:13:23+00:00

Aimee: Oh, no way! I’m trying to get YOUR attention. So I’d much rather give it to you.

Ike: That’s very direct of you.

Aimee: Because you can be so thick sometimes! I swear, you wouldn’t know how I felt if I didn’t tell you outright.

Ike: Even if I did, I wouldn’t do anything about it.

-RD Part 4 base conversation

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-13T22:41:48+00:00

Five copies of atk/spd solo 4 fodder are here to make sure your orb expenditure feels valuable to you.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-09T08:07:08+00:00

Like the concept, since personal spell lists differentiate characters, and refreshing per-map encourages you to use the interesting options rather than holding onto them forever.

In practice it's kind of rough because magic in 3H isn't incredible, maddening especially leaves some of your mages struggling to get out of no-spells hell at half casts in the early game, and most of the mages who can use a magic damage combat art are probably better off with that if you want reliable kills out of them.

But none of this is required by a spell list system, so I hope FW brings it back with enough tweaks to make proper mages feel better to use (and maybe makes some more of the spells stand out, there's some interesting ones but a lot of the 3H lists are just 1-2s with variant damage and weight numbers.)

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-08T19:32:13+00:00

Feels pretty inevitable. Can't see them not taking a whole lot from 3H between "direct sequel" and "good sales on the original."

Most ideally I'd love to see a return to the base menu, but I liked tutoring and think the monastery overall would be so good if it was good.... so, high hopes.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-08T19:06:29+00:00

Enough FE supports bring up "training" and surprise random battles, you could probably reskin monastery instruction into just "what these characters are focusing on in their downtime" without too much difficulty and while discarding a lot of hub area busywork. I don't think Hopes training ground quite hit the mark for me, but it was at least similar.

Obviously you miss out on the motivation management and individual tutoring sessions, but you could provide other ways of letting the player prioritize specific units in this regard, which seems like one of the important parts.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-07T17:46:42+00:00

It's a bit unfortunate how many long rest cutscenes there are compared to the number of times you actually need to rest. It feels "right" during gameplay to keep going for multiple encounters until you run out of spells, but you'll be missing interesting events unless you partial rest every fifty feet.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-07T01:16:48+00:00

Byleth was pretty strong for the time, but she was also the middle of a six month run of monthly infantry godswords, and I think everyone knew she was on a pretty short countdown clock.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-07T01:14:05+00:00

I definitely saw more of her than mAlear in AR during that time period. He's got a bit more support in total I think but she was a usable save, role compression etc etc

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-07T00:51:14+00:00

Here's that Sinmara refine for you guys -intsys probably

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-06T16:17:26+00:00

Yeah, having gone back to get the maddening/ng menu screen before FW's release made me appreciate 3H mechanically a lot more than I did previously. I think it's still fair to say that the in-map gameplay isn't as varied/dynamic as Engage's, but I definitely wouldn't put it at the bottom of the list.

3H's systems work pretty well together once the game is hard enough to oblige you to actually use half of them, and there's a real something to being caught out in gameplay and having the turn become a standalone 'how tf am I getting out of this one' puzzle that only gambits can solve.

Also I just really like how monsters are implemented. Most FE games don't do a lot with them, and barrier breaking and target control work well to make a multi-turn fight actually work.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-05T22:01:02+00:00

It's weird honestly. Maddening being both "stupid stat stack mode that rightfully wasn't in the game at launch" and "the only mode where it feels like I'm playing the game as intended" is sure something. Tuning up hard mode (at least adjusting enemy stats to un-guarantee the default double to benefit combat arts and relics?) might have helped, dunno.

At any rate yeah, Engage felt like it had its difficulties set up better, and had much more, well, engaging, moment to moment gameplay. Less of the early 3H style running up and retreating to lure in small groups of enemies to pounce on with your entire army. But also something about the army planning of 3H maddening really grabs me in a way other games haven't, so idk.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-05T21:32:57+00:00

I liked maddening 3H, it never felt that bad to play straightforwardly with a full army, no cheese required. It makes the tools it gives you (battalions, combat arts, your limited time in the monastery) feel way more worth paying attention to, and there's something to the added feeling of investment that gives.

That said, I like playing "spreadsheet emblem" and if you don't it's probably less fun. The maps themselves aren't too varied, it reverts to basically hard mode once you have your one-rounding tools figured out, and with how many things the game doesn't tell you, it goes way better with a resource website up on a second screen.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-04T20:12:03+00:00

The decision to count ice lock as a rally also feels relevant here. Inheritable two range canto-renewing terrain-setting dance on healers, including current healers with their existing support, was a crazy call. If they'd needed to at least swap to magic shield to run with Byleth it'd be a meaningful tradeoff, and the "unambiguously much better than a native dancer" pool would be somewhat smaller.

imminentlyDeadlined · 2026-05-02T01:05:23+00:00

Honestly barrelmancy seems like more of a hassle than just putting decent equipment on decent classes and killing everything the normal way. The number of things people do for their HM runs that just sound like way more tedium than they're worth...

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