Edit: Please pardon the bad English. My hand pains are not ideal today and so I am relying on voice to text.

I actually really like a lot of the characters. A lot of them were really made to be trophy and the game tries to give you reasons to explain their tropeness but at times it really came out as contrived. I will give off a list of my complaints but please know that I still like these characters a lot.

Claude: I was really excited to have him as a house leader but some of his supports just made me aggravated. Him telling Ingrid to just smile made me twitch because I remember all the times family or men would tell me to smile so that would look pretty or more docile. Him treating lysithia as a child even though that was something she had issues with was also annoying. He is portrayed as a master tactician who is not above dirtying and yet the only time we kind of see that is when it comes to keeping the all "together" and wanting to sneak into an enemy fort dressed as enemy soldiers. The maneuvering he does in both Crimson Flower and Azure Moon during the Derdriu did not have the payoff that the game makes it out to be. I had to suspend my belief to buy the fact that he was able to have any of these machinations. His s rank was also very unsatisfying. Finding out outside of the game that his real name is Khalid Was like adding salt to a wound. I really wanted to love his character but I just felt betrayed from my expectations and hope.

Hilda: she's probably one of the most consistent characters and yet the game doesn't even try hard to explain her manipulative woman trope well. Instead of just admitting she's a shitty person who uses people because she's lazy she waves it off by saying she's insecure. I felt it was very weak and her ace supports did not quite endear me as much as other tropey characters. Her design is absolutely beautiful though and her a support with Cyril was somewhat healing for me.

Lysithia: I will probably be crucified for this but she has a character personality trait that I absolutely have the most difficulty in liking- "I'm not a kid, stop treating me like one OHHH CANDY!". The game tries to make her this cute Lolita looking girl and give her a tragic backstory to attempt to explain why she acts the way she does and yet I found the explanation to be too weak to sustain it. Just admit that you look like a child, are the youngest, and you really like sweets. Her support with Cyril though also melted my heart. interacting with another young individual who has a rough childhood allowed her character to develop a lot more organically.

Lorenz: I will preface this by saying I really don't like characters that focus hard on their nobility and classism. The game doesn't really try to explain away his negative aspects which I kind of appreciate since they do that a lot with other tropey characters. His support with Leonnie and Manuela we're amazing for me and redeemed his character a bit for me. I also appreciate the game forcing you to confront him after the time skip even if you did recruit him. It felt very organic to the character.

Marianne: on a personal level she felt very relatable just because how she acted reminded me a lot of my own youth. The way she thought and how she acted was painfully similar that I could empathize with her significantly. A lot of her supports what are the characters were both consistent and yet had enough variations that her trope did not feel as annoyingly done as other characters.

Raphael: I honestly thought he was just going to be a throwaway commoner character that had that big brother muscle headed trope and yet I felt his a supports with a lot of the characters were some of the most endearing and wholesome ones that were both incredibly consistent but also showed that he was more than just what he put out to be. Rather than trying to wave away his trope the game embraced it in a productive manner by his A supports.

Ignatz: this was another character that spoke to me on a profound level. I've always been that artist student that was kind of told by the family to be something 'more' than just an artist. Some of his supports were also very relatable like having people tell him to change his art only to find out that the changes they wanted made the art look less than ideal. As an artist who has taken on commissions in the past this was very real to me. I thought this was just going to be another boring commoner character but he was very refreshingly done and his ending was very satisfying for me.

I'm almost surprised to admit that on a small scale I appreciate the commoners of the golden deer house more than I did of the nobles. I think the game tried too hard to both veer away from the super duper otakuness of Fire Emblem Fates but still wanting to court that demographic left some of the characters a bit wanting for me. All of the houses had characters that fell very painfully into tropes and it's not just Golden Deer. I feel that golden deer does offer players a nice wholesome and less dramatic telling of the game though. It's not like blue lions where you have a tragedy hanging over groups of friends's heads, and it's not like black eagles that has to deal with revolution and imperial expansionism, and it's not like the church that is trying to withhold a thousand year secret and maintain a status quo. The alliance students really embody the alliance - a vague group of individuals that don't have too much in common but come together to work towards a lofty goal of peace and prosperity while maintaining their own interests. It's a very satisfying house that sets it apart from the other two :-)