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Nohr Wrapup (Part 1)
Finished the Nohr route of FE14. Here are my general thoughts. Beware: minor spoilers!
Gameplay:
I played on Nohr Hard. It was my first FE14 playthrough.
The gameplay is very good. It is also very different. 2/3rds of the way through, I found myself wishing that I'd played Hoshido first, because I had been touching and feeling my way through the mechanics and Nohr's last ten chapters are sufficiently hard to punish bad midgame decisions.
Namely, FE14 is perhaps the only game where spike stats really work.
For example, Marx gets a lot of strength and defense, but is very lacking in speed. He finished the game for me with nearly 40 defense and a mountain of strength, but only 21 speed. By comparison, enemy spellcasters typically had about 28 speed by this point, and enemy samurai/jyonin had 40. So he would sustain double attacks from nearly everything. The flip side is that enemy samurai/jyonin had about 40 attack power, so they'd do like, 3x2 damage.
This is significantly better than the damage that more evened out units tend to take. Mozume with her golden Aptitude stats maxed out her speed at 31 and her defense at 35, resulting in a situation where she'd *still* take two hits from samurai/jyonin, except they'd do five more damage each hit to her. That's ten more damage. That's an incredibly important difference. And fast-and-lanky units in late-game just can't take the kind of punishment that guarding a point entails. Zero in guard stance with a shining bow wrecked midgame, but once he capped out　and the enemy caught up, he was not frontline-defense material anymore.
(He was, however, very good for taking down jyonin, since bows > shuriken > magic which meant that Leon couldn't manage to land hits on them. More on that later.)
Meanwhile, if I had raised a General, I would've really had a great defender. They eventually get a skill that neutralizes double-attacks in battle. When I saw an enemy general with that, I just about died of envy. So my advice to you: raise a general! They are actually really good in this game!!
Similarly, Leon has a FE10-style potentency with his magic. After the enemy catches up in level, Nosferatu spam is not really an option anymore, and he ends up too slow and too fragile to be exposed to very much. However, he's basically guaranteed to cap magic and is easily the most effective glass cannon in the game. He will blast smoking craters into enemies with defensive stats that would otherwise take four units to kill.
So, yeah. Glass cannons are actually glass cannons. Defensive specialists actually defend well. And all-rounders are good for general utility but never outdo specialized units at anything.
Don't do what I did and just raise a bunch of lovable all-rounders in midgame because it seems to work. Raise a general for fuck's sake.
The maps in Nohr are generally pretty good, although I swear to you that 4/5 of them are gimmicks (with or without Dragon Vein). Typically they're well-balanced gimmicks, however! There is the sense that you don't just Use Dragon Vein to Win. Often, the way dragon vein interacts with the flow of the chapter is entertainingly complex. They could help or hinder you depending on when you use them.
I actually find that some of this complexity was rather hard to intellectually manage alongside everything else that's going on. It gives you another layer of complexity to think about, and Nohr's later chapters can be pretty difficult to deal with already. I'd inevitably end up having to attempt the chapter a few times before I got the hang of how the Vein would be best used in my favor. And because the Vein effect differed dramatically from chapter to chapter, I was constantly having to learn new things. It was as exhausting as it was entertaining. I was ridiculously happy when I finally hit Takumi's more conventional map. (Then I flouted its intended battle flow, flew my army across the ravine, and took the ballistae. It was fun.)
There is also more complexity heaped on top of it all with the prevalence of skills that add tiny bonuses under certain conditions. It used to be, in older FEs, that I'd calculate how much damage was about to be tossed around well before I executed any plan. In FE14 this is nearly impossible to do (reliably) in your head because there are so many modifiers to keep track of.
Fortunately, the UI is really fantastic and it helps reduce the burden of calculating many other things.
The attack range thing is better than it's ever been before. First, enemies that don't move or only move slowly are shown to have the movement they will actually undertake, so there's a lot less uncertainty and scouting involved with bosses that don't sit on thrones. Secondly, it now shows the largest potential attack range of enemies. For example, if you have a long skinny hallway crammed to the brim with Iron Lance Knights, and at the very end you have a mage, under the FE11-13 system, it would not show the mage's ability to hit you across the hallway's walls because the knights are currently preventing that mage from moving there. However, if the knights move over the course of the enemy turn, that mage could dart out and punish you. In FE14, showing attack ranges will correctly show that the mage can blast you through the walls.
I just realized that I've wrote all of this without even mentioning attack/guard stance. Well, attack/guard stance works. It works so well that you learn how to use it by the time the maps heat up and by the end you're not even consciously thinking about this Super Special Mechanic--it's just inherently part of the flow of battle. It works as a symmetric mechanic, its predictability makes it more fun and strategic to incorporate, and the tradeoffs involved in either stance make it much more interesting to manage than Pair Up in FE13.
Regarding child characters, I was not impressed with what I saw of Sofie, but I suspect this is because I made her with Silas and Felicia and their union produced a child with very evened out stats. (See the above for what I think about evened out stats.) The fact that they instantly pop up to their parents' level means that they're usable right away in Nohr's fast paced progression, but it also prevents them from being the gods of death that the FE13 children were. I think it's probably worth making S supports between characters with similar stats just to get a decent unit at a high level without having to spend extra exp on them. But they don't seem to be the end-all be-all.
To wrap this section up, a few thoughts on characters from a gameplay perspective:
EDIT: I feel very differently about some of these characters now. Please take these all with a huge grain of salt and remember that I was struggling to make it without using armor knights.
Kamui: Amazing. The best tank in the game with the True Dragonstone (which attacks with magic btw). Wrecks shit with swords. Wrecks shit with fire. Gets great skills as a Darkblood. In my next game I'll probably take speed asset, luck flaw, and wyvern rider secondary. This is because the Revenant Knight branch gets some amazingly useful skills (more on this later).
Azura: A solid dancer. Pretty typical dancery stats, but because she gets 40 levels, by endgame she can typically take a hit in a pinch (as long as it isn't from too strong an enemy). I didn't try to reclass her and use her offensively because I love dancers.
Gunter: Pretty typical Jeigan. I thought he was useful in a few maps where I just wanted Kamui in guard stance at all times. I strapped Gunter to his side for entire maps because Gunter makes a good Avatar buddy.
Felicia: Amazing in the early game, retains her usefulness in late game. Reasonably good dodging stats, and she can really hurt things when given magic shuriken. I thought her flexibility was extremely useful, given that she could either support by healing, support by debuffing a powerful enemy, or finish something off with magic shuriken.
Joker: So, the maps near the end suddenly start letting you take slightly more units than in the middle, and I found myself having a space that needed to be filled. Reasoning that clerics can always make themselves useful at any level, I took Joker. He was okay. He healed. He could hurt things sometimes with the Deathly Shuriken, and then heal himself back afterwards. He was perpetually underleveled so I can't compare him in any fairness to anyone else.
Suzukaze: Eh. I kind of felt like he was excessive. There were few times I wanted to spend a unit's turn debuffing something, and Felicia was already there. And if I wanted something killed, there were better units to do that with. I quickly benched him just because I never thought that taking him would be worth the space. But I could be wrong about that. Jyonin do get some incredible after-battle-damage skills. I imagine I'll have a better perpective on shinobi after I play Hoshido.
Silas: Silas is great. Since I made the critical mistake of not raising Generals, Great Knight Silas was one of my most important tanks. In early-to-mid game he can also kill stuff pretty quickly and easily... and since he's one of your only units, you kind of have to use him, so. :P By the very end of the game I was still using him as a tank, since he had slightly better speed and res than Marx, which allowed him to occasionally take fire from mages.
Asura: I started using him because when you first get him, his stats are comparable to Zero's, and Zero is amazing. Plus I needed more bows. But the lack of supports really hurt, and his growths were pretty lukewarm too. I wish I hadn't used him. In endgame I basically used him as a guard stance speed buff and a sometimes-staff user.
Wait Izana is recruitable?? I had no idea. I didn't get him. Someone explain this to me.
Mozume: In midgame, I started to think she wasn't worth it, because she was a bit better than others but not that much better and she sucked up a damn lot of exp. By late game, when everyone started hitting level 20 and ceasing to improve despite having quite a bit of room to do so (lookin' at you Leon), I was deeply appreciative of her superior growths. (So yeah, ultimately I think Mozume is worth it. Endure the pain of raising her while the game is still easy.) I had her promote to Weapon Master and she was an okay tank with Strength Seal. For a moment she doubled almost everything and her killing power was great, but then she capped speed at 31 and that kind of stopped being a Thing. I wish I had parallel seal'd her to the archer branch earlier in life, as I suspect that her potential lies more in the realm of attacking things quickly. And there's so many places throughout the game where bows rock, and the only native bow users you get are Zero and Asura.
Elise: Using Elise wasn't really a conscious thing, it was just a thing that happened because I like having multiple healers. She's okay. I promoted her to "Strategist" (AKA Valkyrie) and she felt like pretty much every other Valkyrie I've ever used, except with more magic and less skill. She was useful in endgame both for healing and for massive blasts for magic. I'd use her again, though I don't really feel like that's much of a choice--I need her healing and then by the time I don't really need her healing, she has tomes and can smash stuff while getting free exp through healing.
Harold: He seemed okay when I was using him, but I stopped using him pretty fast because I have a fighter anti-bias. Now that I know that conventional FE class trends don't hold, I would gladly give him another chance.
Elfie: She actually seemed pretty good when I was using her, but I made no attempt to give her exp and she fell behind. I let her, because she was an armor knight. I regret that decision so much.
Not!Owain: His stats are way too evened out. He gets practically as much strength as magic. As a result, he can't actually hurt anything which defeats the point of a mage. I took him for a bit as a Nosferatu abuser, but once I got Leon I discovered that Sorcerer Leon did a much better job because he could actually do enough damage to sap back his missing HP! I suspect that if you're going to use not!Owain, he's better off in the myrmidon branch.
Zero: Zero is amazing. Bows are amazing. Thiefy stats are amazing. As an adventurer he even gets enough magic to do serious magic damage with the 1-2 range shining bow... which doubles as a defensive tactic since that means you probably get 6/10 dual guard shields each battle. Use Zero.
Nyx: I wish I had given Nyx more of a chance. I saw that her statline was Tharjaesque and I was like "I don't need another dark mage that misses everything" and passed her up in favor of Owain. But I suspect she would've made a more useful mage than Owain.
Camilla: Use Camilla and make sure she keeps up with your team level-wise, and then parallel seal her to Wyvern Lord after she's done getting the Revenant Knight skills. See, the thing is, Revenant Knights get some amazingly useful skills for causing mass destruction. They get a skill that lets them swap places with the thing they're attacking. They get a skill that deals 20% max hp splash damage after they attack. And at lv 15, they get a skill that adds +5 to your damage to everything that isn't mounted. These skills are incredibly potent for dealing damage and Camilla gets such good stats--despite having somewhat evened out stats--that she can really do some work with them. ...Then after she gets the skills, parallel her to Wyvern Lord because Wyvern Lords get a much better statline and she's useless with magic anyway. :P In my game I had let her fall behind on levels because at first she was an exp suck and then later she didn't seem as good as comparably leveled units. But her growths really are good. She catches up, if you let her. Use Camilla. Give her EXP.
Not!Severa: I used her because she's the only pegasus knight option in Nohr (besides Aqua and potentially Kamui). I promoted her to the gold bird class because I found fighting those things annoying and I wanted more bows. These two decisions in combination were a mistake. her low weapon levels in combination with her low strength growth left her unable to hurt anything, and I babied her levels for nearly the entire game. There might be some way to actually make use of her, but I don't think I can be bothered to try when she comes at the same time as Velka, who I suspect is more promising.
Velka: I used her for a time, but as Zero's guard stance buddy, she quickly fell behind in levels and I ditched her. Knowing how good Revenant Knight skills are, I regret that. I wish I had raised her instead of Severa. Velka seems to have a traditional wyvern lord-y statline (unlike Camilla's, which feels like Farina's statline) and I think she would've been really useful.
Not!Inigo (whose name I would render as Roswald if I had the chance): Dread Fighter Inigo did eventually catch up in levels enough to be useful and actually help kill things. More importantly, he can dance. Oh yes. He can dance. And it's just a +1 str +1 speed buff but I've lost track of how many times that +1 speed made a critical difference to something I was doing. In another playthrough, I might hook him up with Aqua so I can make him a Falcoknight to grab Rally Speed and make him my buffslave. (...but also because Inigo on a pegasus, dancing, gives me joy.) Dancing and rally go off of the same command so I think they'd activate simultaneously.
Pieri: I suspect that she could be very good, especially with Galeforce on top of her personal skill. In my playthrough she got edged out because I was trying to use all the FE13 kids. So who knows.
Benoit: Benoit seemed pretty good in the chapter you get him, and I wish I'd kept using him. Because Generals.
Charlotte: I refuse to use Charlotte on principle.
Leon: LEOOONNNnnnn. Okay Leon is actually pretty disappointing in terms of stat growths because all he ever gets is magic, but as I've mentioned, this is perfectly sufficient for him to be one of the most useful units in my army. Also he's adorable. Would use again.
Flannel: He seemed fine on the chapter I got him. His beastbane skill certainly was useful. I just have an unreasonable aversion to transforming units, and I had my hands full already.
Marx: As previously mentioned, Marx gets pretty tanky stats and is pretty useful on this account. Also, his personal weapon is a tremendously powerful 1-2 range sword that doesn't hinder your speed. That's a pretty big deal in this game, since most units that can use physical 1-2 range weapons without significant nerfs also deal very light damage. Marx is also very useful (if not outright OP) right off the bat. I bet the efficiency people will love him.
... You can recruit Flora??? how????
Okay PegasusKnight suggests that Serenes Forest is lying to me and neither Izana nor Flora are recruitable. OKAY.
Sofie: Eh. I ended up using her primarily to help people be in guard stance, and occasionally to kill mages because she inherited her mother's Tomeslayer. Maybe she'd be better if I hooked up Silas with someone else inclined toward having good physical stats.
Due to length, I'm going to stick my thoughts on aesthetics and story into another post.
Gameplay:
I played on Nohr Hard. It was my first FE14 playthrough.
The gameplay is very good. It is also very different. 2/3rds of the way through, I found myself wishing that I'd played Hoshido first, because I had been touching and feeling my way through the mechanics and Nohr's last ten chapters are sufficiently hard to punish bad midgame decisions.
Namely, FE14 is perhaps the only game where spike stats really work.
For example, Marx gets a lot of strength and defense, but is very lacking in speed. He finished the game for me with nearly 40 defense and a mountain of strength, but only 21 speed. By comparison, enemy spellcasters typically had about 28 speed by this point, and enemy samurai/jyonin had 40. So he would sustain double attacks from nearly everything. The flip side is that enemy samurai/jyonin had about 40 attack power, so they'd do like, 3x2 damage.
This is significantly better than the damage that more evened out units tend to take. Mozume with her golden Aptitude stats maxed out her speed at 31 and her defense at 35, resulting in a situation where she'd *still* take two hits from samurai/jyonin, except they'd do five more damage each hit to her. That's ten more damage. That's an incredibly important difference. And fast-and-lanky units in late-game just can't take the kind of punishment that guarding a point entails. Zero in guard stance with a shining bow wrecked midgame, but once he capped out　and the enemy caught up, he was not frontline-defense material anymore.
(He was, however, very good for taking down jyonin, since bows > shuriken > magic which meant that Leon couldn't manage to land hits on them. More on that later.)
Meanwhile, if I had raised a General, I would've really had a great defender. They eventually get a skill that neutralizes double-attacks in battle. When I saw an enemy general with that, I just about died of envy. So my advice to you: raise a general! They are actually really good in this game!!
Similarly, Leon has a FE10-style potentency with his magic. After the enemy catches up in level, Nosferatu spam is not really an option anymore, and he ends up too slow and too fragile to be exposed to very much. However, he's basically guaranteed to cap magic and is easily the most effective glass cannon in the game. He will blast smoking craters into enemies with defensive stats that would otherwise take four units to kill.
So, yeah. Glass cannons are actually glass cannons. Defensive specialists actually defend well. And all-rounders are good for general utility but never outdo specialized units at anything.
Don't do what I did and just raise a bunch of lovable all-rounders in midgame because it seems to work. Raise a general for fuck's sake.
The maps in Nohr are generally pretty good, although I swear to you that 4/5 of them are gimmicks (with or without Dragon Vein). Typically they're well-balanced gimmicks, however! There is the sense that you don't just Use Dragon Vein to Win. Often, the way dragon vein interacts with the flow of the chapter is entertainingly complex. They could help or hinder you depending on when you use them.
I actually find that some of this complexity was rather hard to intellectually manage alongside everything else that's going on. It gives you another layer of complexity to think about, and Nohr's later chapters can be pretty difficult to deal with already. I'd inevitably end up having to attempt the chapter a few times before I got the hang of how the Vein would be best used in my favor. And because the Vein effect differed dramatically from chapter to chapter, I was constantly having to learn new things. It was as exhausting as it was entertaining. I was ridiculously happy when I finally hit Takumi's more conventional map. (Then I flouted its intended battle flow, flew my army across the ravine, and took the ballistae. It was fun.)
There is also more complexity heaped on top of it all with the prevalence of skills that add tiny bonuses under certain conditions. It used to be, in older FEs, that I'd calculate how much damage was about to be tossed around well before I executed any plan. In FE14 this is nearly impossible to do (reliably) in your head because there are so many modifiers to keep track of.
Fortunately, the UI is really fantastic and it helps reduce the burden of calculating many other things.
The attack range thing is better than it's ever been before. First, enemies that don't move or only move slowly are shown to have the movement they will actually undertake, so there's a lot less uncertainty and scouting involved with bosses that don't sit on thrones. Secondly, it now shows the largest potential attack range of enemies. For example, if you have a long skinny hallway crammed to the brim with Iron Lance Knights, and at the very end you have a mage, under the FE11-13 system, it would not show the mage's ability to hit you across the hallway's walls because the knights are currently preventing that mage from moving there. However, if the knights move over the course of the enemy turn, that mage could dart out and punish you. In FE14, showing attack ranges will correctly show that the mage can blast you through the walls.
I just realized that I've wrote all of this without even mentioning attack/guard stance. Well, attack/guard stance works. It works so well that you learn how to use it by the time the maps heat up and by the end you're not even consciously thinking about this Super Special Mechanic--it's just inherently part of the flow of battle. It works as a symmetric mechanic, its predictability makes it more fun and strategic to incorporate, and the tradeoffs involved in either stance make it much more interesting to manage than Pair Up in FE13.
Regarding child characters, I was not impressed with what I saw of Sofie, but I suspect this is because I made her with Silas and Felicia and their union produced a child with very evened out stats. (See the above for what I think about evened out stats.) The fact that they instantly pop up to their parents' level means that they're usable right away in Nohr's fast paced progression, but it also prevents them from being the gods of death that the FE13 children were. I think it's probably worth making S supports between characters with similar stats just to get a decent unit at a high level without having to spend extra exp on them. But they don't seem to be the end-all be-all.
To wrap this section up, a few thoughts on characters from a gameplay perspective:
EDIT: I feel very differently about some of these characters now. Please take these all with a huge grain of salt and remember that I was struggling to make it without using armor knights.
Kamui: Amazing. The best tank in the game with the True Dragonstone (which attacks with magic btw). Wrecks shit with swords. Wrecks shit with fire. Gets great skills as a Darkblood. In my next game I'll probably take speed asset, luck flaw, and wyvern rider secondary. This is because the Revenant Knight branch gets some amazingly useful skills (more on this later).
Azura: A solid dancer. Pretty typical dancery stats, but because she gets 40 levels, by endgame she can typically take a hit in a pinch (as long as it isn't from too strong an enemy). I didn't try to reclass her and use her offensively because I love dancers.
Gunter: Pretty typical Jeigan. I thought he was useful in a few maps where I just wanted Kamui in guard stance at all times. I strapped Gunter to his side for entire maps because Gunter makes a good Avatar buddy.
Felicia: Amazing in the early game, retains her usefulness in late game. Reasonably good dodging stats, and she can really hurt things when given magic shuriken. I thought her flexibility was extremely useful, given that she could either support by healing, support by debuffing a powerful enemy, or finish something off with magic shuriken.
Joker: So, the maps near the end suddenly start letting you take slightly more units than in the middle, and I found myself having a space that needed to be filled. Reasoning that clerics can always make themselves useful at any level, I took Joker. He was okay. He healed. He could hurt things sometimes with the Deathly Shuriken, and then heal himself back afterwards. He was perpetually underleveled so I can't compare him in any fairness to anyone else.
Suzukaze: Eh. I kind of felt like he was excessive. There were few times I wanted to spend a unit's turn debuffing something, and Felicia was already there. And if I wanted something killed, there were better units to do that with. I quickly benched him just because I never thought that taking him would be worth the space. But I could be wrong about that. Jyonin do get some incredible after-battle-damage skills. I imagine I'll have a better perpective on shinobi after I play Hoshido.
Silas: Silas is great. Since I made the critical mistake of not raising Generals, Great Knight Silas was one of my most important tanks. In early-to-mid game he can also kill stuff pretty quickly and easily... and since he's one of your only units, you kind of have to use him, so. :P By the very end of the game I was still using him as a tank, since he had slightly better speed and res than Marx, which allowed him to occasionally take fire from mages.
Asura: I started using him because when you first get him, his stats are comparable to Zero's, and Zero is amazing. Plus I needed more bows. But the lack of supports really hurt, and his growths were pretty lukewarm too. I wish I hadn't used him. In endgame I basically used him as a guard stance speed buff and a sometimes-staff user.
Wait Izana is recruitable?? I had no idea. I didn't get him. Someone explain this to me.
Mozume: In midgame, I started to think she wasn't worth it, because she was a bit better than others but not that much better and she sucked up a damn lot of exp. By late game, when everyone started hitting level 20 and ceasing to improve despite having quite a bit of room to do so (lookin' at you Leon), I was deeply appreciative of her superior growths. (So yeah, ultimately I think Mozume is worth it. Endure the pain of raising her while the game is still easy.) I had her promote to Weapon Master and she was an okay tank with Strength Seal. For a moment she doubled almost everything and her killing power was great, but then she capped speed at 31 and that kind of stopped being a Thing. I wish I had parallel seal'd her to the archer branch earlier in life, as I suspect that her potential lies more in the realm of attacking things quickly. And there's so many places throughout the game where bows rock, and the only native bow users you get are Zero and Asura.
Elise: Using Elise wasn't really a conscious thing, it was just a thing that happened because I like having multiple healers. She's okay. I promoted her to "Strategist" (AKA Valkyrie) and she felt like pretty much every other Valkyrie I've ever used, except with more magic and less skill. She was useful in endgame both for healing and for massive blasts for magic. I'd use her again, though I don't really feel like that's much of a choice--I need her healing and then by the time I don't really need her healing, she has tomes and can smash stuff while getting free exp through healing.
Harold: He seemed okay when I was using him, but I stopped using him pretty fast because I have a fighter anti-bias. Now that I know that conventional FE class trends don't hold, I would gladly give him another chance.
Elfie: She actually seemed pretty good when I was using her, but I made no attempt to give her exp and she fell behind. I let her, because she was an armor knight. I regret that decision so much.
Not!Owain: His stats are way too evened out. He gets practically as much strength as magic. As a result, he can't actually hurt anything which defeats the point of a mage. I took him for a bit as a Nosferatu abuser, but once I got Leon I discovered that Sorcerer Leon did a much better job because he could actually do enough damage to sap back his missing HP! I suspect that if you're going to use not!Owain, he's better off in the myrmidon branch.
Zero: Zero is amazing. Bows are amazing. Thiefy stats are amazing. As an adventurer he even gets enough magic to do serious magic damage with the 1-2 range shining bow... which doubles as a defensive tactic since that means you probably get 6/10 dual guard shields each battle. Use Zero.
Nyx: I wish I had given Nyx more of a chance. I saw that her statline was Tharjaesque and I was like "I don't need another dark mage that misses everything" and passed her up in favor of Owain. But I suspect she would've made a more useful mage than Owain.
Camilla: Use Camilla and make sure she keeps up with your team level-wise, and then parallel seal her to Wyvern Lord after she's done getting the Revenant Knight skills. See, the thing is, Revenant Knights get some amazingly useful skills for causing mass destruction. They get a skill that lets them swap places with the thing they're attacking. They get a skill that deals 20% max hp splash damage after they attack. And at lv 15, they get a skill that adds +5 to your damage to everything that isn't mounted. These skills are incredibly potent for dealing damage and Camilla gets such good stats--despite having somewhat evened out stats--that she can really do some work with them. ...Then after she gets the skills, parallel her to Wyvern Lord because Wyvern Lords get a much better statline and she's useless with magic anyway. :P In my game I had let her fall behind on levels because at first she was an exp suck and then later she didn't seem as good as comparably leveled units. But her growths really are good. She catches up, if you let her. Use Camilla. Give her EXP.
Not!Severa: I used her because she's the only pegasus knight option in Nohr (besides Aqua and potentially Kamui). I promoted her to the gold bird class because I found fighting those things annoying and I wanted more bows. These two decisions in combination were a mistake. her low weapon levels in combination with her low strength growth left her unable to hurt anything, and I babied her levels for nearly the entire game. There might be some way to actually make use of her, but I don't think I can be bothered to try when she comes at the same time as Velka, who I suspect is more promising.
Velka: I used her for a time, but as Zero's guard stance buddy, she quickly fell behind in levels and I ditched her. Knowing how good Revenant Knight skills are, I regret that. I wish I had raised her instead of Severa. Velka seems to have a traditional wyvern lord-y statline (unlike Camilla's, which feels like Farina's statline) and I think she would've been really useful.
Not!Inigo (whose name I would render as Roswald if I had the chance): Dread Fighter Inigo did eventually catch up in levels enough to be useful and actually help kill things. More importantly, he can dance. Oh yes. He can dance. And it's just a +1 str +1 speed buff but I've lost track of how many times that +1 speed made a critical difference to something I was doing. In another playthrough, I might hook him up with Aqua so I can make him a Falcoknight to grab Rally Speed and make him my buffslave. (...but also because Inigo on a pegasus, dancing, gives me joy.) Dancing and rally go off of the same command so I think they'd activate simultaneously.
Pieri: I suspect that she could be very good, especially with Galeforce on top of her personal skill. In my playthrough she got edged out because I was trying to use all the FE13 kids. So who knows.
Benoit: Benoit seemed pretty good in the chapter you get him, and I wish I'd kept using him. Because Generals.
Charlotte: I refuse to use Charlotte on principle.
Leon: LEOOONNNnnnn. Okay Leon is actually pretty disappointing in terms of stat growths because all he ever gets is magic, but as I've mentioned, this is perfectly sufficient for him to be one of the most useful units in my army. Also he's adorable. Would use again.
Flannel: He seemed fine on the chapter I got him. His beastbane skill certainly was useful. I just have an unreasonable aversion to transforming units, and I had my hands full already.
Marx: As previously mentioned, Marx gets pretty tanky stats and is pretty useful on this account. Also, his personal weapon is a tremendously powerful 1-2 range sword that doesn't hinder your speed. That's a pretty big deal in this game, since most units that can use physical 1-2 range weapons without significant nerfs also deal very light damage. Marx is also very useful (if not outright OP) right off the bat. I bet the efficiency people will love him.
... You can recruit Flora??? how????
Okay PegasusKnight suggests that Serenes Forest is lying to me and neither Izana nor Flora are recruitable. OKAY.
Sofie: Eh. I ended up using her primarily to help people be in guard stance, and occasionally to kill mages because she inherited her mother's Tomeslayer. Maybe she'd be better if I hooked up Silas with someone else inclined toward having good physical stats.
Due to length, I'm going to stick my thoughts on aesthetics and story into another post.
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generals are clutch this time around? OKAY THAT DOES IT I'M (ALMOST) SOLD. THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN NEEDING FOR ELEVEN YEARS. GATRIE BEING GREAT WAS JUST NOT ENOUGH TO SATE MY NEED FOR GENERALS
this fandom would be a much better place if you'd been the one who translated character names first :(
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Hopefully the localizers will have the good sense not to go with "Lazward" or whatever it is they're going with on Serenes...
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of course it's thorp so who gives a shit
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Of course it's Priam so yeah who gives a shit?
Actually I do... he wasted an excellent name.
ETA: the wank over "Loren" / Laurent wasn't as funny because part of the argument against "Loren" was the claim that it's an "archaic" name and uh... there are like, real estate agents in my town named that. Maybe it's a Midwest thing but the name exists.
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i mean sure some were kinda dodgy (smia...) but for god's sake serenes, a) you've stuck with names from a source like this for the japan-only games for so long and this is no different, b) the shit-losing over chrom in particular became doubly hilarious when the english version hit and called him exactly that, and c) you called a guy WOOD
i think i took up calling him "eudes" out of sheer spite until the english version came along
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I like the name Paris as a reference to Ike's prototype name. Of course, Ike's prototype name was never localized so...
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well, that's where that one came from. of course this just goes to show why you don't listen to internal names (the dumps also spell marx "marks" and macbeth "makubex"...)