Cai's Casuality: Altered

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weaveactive

Beaten Cai's final battle. It was good! Story was fine. I maintain Cai feels like a character in the wrong franchise and nothing about his story really changed my opinion of that.

Some spoilers: His dad's illness still seems random and pointless.

I disliked how many adult characters appeared to...just be waiting for him to be of age which is...a vibe.

The "gods" in this setting are just weird and I think it's partially because they've all been flattened age wise. Solel is Aurora's dad but she could just be his sister or lover or whatever.

Overall I think subsequent runs will go much faster without all the side questing to do. Which, good! The game takes too long between major plot elements. I just wonder how much there will even be to do. I now know I don't need to recruit as much so there's kind of a double lessening of time pressure.

We're on to Theodora next. She seemed like the opposite side of Cai's coin. Going to try to reduce overlap with some of my characters from last time.

Oof, it is ROUGH to go back to level 1, three units, and intro fights. I think the overall tutorialization could be further reduced here.

Dyan sucks but we're laying it on a bit thick with the forked tongue? It's so hard to take this greaser with the pompadour seriously. He's so anachronistic. There's a lot of tell, don't show about the Saraminians being a sea people.

Overall her story feels much more in line with a standard Fire Emblem, at least to start. A lord with a mission for their people. It also goes MUCH faster this time between story battles which is a good thing. Part of that is definitely me just knowing the ropes better, and part of it is just that by having done the other route a lot of things are just done for me.

It really feels like THIS is the way the game should be played. Although one caveat, don't go so deep in the paint on the karma shard prizes. They can really quickly trivialize the game and it's a one way ratchet: I can't reinstate 10% exp boost, now it's 30% or nothing.