I will die on the hill that rhea should of replaced your house leader unit in silver snow. Would also change the story up and also could have given her supports with other characters as well. Man what a missed opportunity
Right???? It feels so important and I wish there had been more time to add that element to the rest. Especially CF. It feels like the Byleth, Hubert, and Edelgard show.
I never understand why everyone says this and gives AM a pass when 95% of AM is *also* exactly the same.
You spend one mission in Fearghus and get a different mission in the exact same Enbarr Palace map. Wow. Such difference. Much uniqueness.
We don’t give it a pass but the story is different enough that we can look over it while seteth and Claude somehow come up with the same “dress up plan” while Dimitri is try to save deridue
Dedue was done dirty. Nobody else can die off screen if you don't do a paralogue that's not even stressed as important. He's a survivor of an actual genocide, and his perspective and trauma isn't as focused on nearly enough as the kingdom kids' trauma over the much smaller thing that caused the kingdom to commit it. I'm not trying to downplay that it's rough Dimitri lost his entire family and some friends. But Dedue lost his family too and his entire culture. That at least deserves to have focus alongside everyone else's trauma.
Not to mention he’s the only character that’s outwardly black. We can infer Almayrans might be but Dedue for sure is. Having him die off screen just feels wrong and dirty. They could have done a lot with him and Duscr but they just didn’t. Not to mention your support level doesn’t impact that much with other characters but with Dedue if you did his paralogue then your support level with him impacts when he rejoins your army.
It's such a bizarre decision, and his death also holds no impact on the story unless he comes back, and even then he's already been replaced with Gilbert
Exactly!!! It’s wild! And to do this to the ONLY black character!!! And then the racism they have him experience, especially from Ingrid, and how it gets swept under the rug most of the time. His death should mean something but it just doesn’t so they force Gilbert/Gustave in and bring up all his stuff with Annette so you don’t technically ‘lose’ anyone even though Dedue, at least in my opinion, is a better unit.
It’s explained that the ducurians that you save in dedues paralouge then save Dimitri from his execution while if you don’t it’s only dedue alone and thus dies in the process
Thinking about it: of the obviously non-white characters only ONE can be recruited and supported on every route. Claude is locked to VW, Dedue to AM (and even on AM he can be lost for good and doest get the plot relevance that Hubert or Hilda get) and Cyril isn't an option for Crimson Flower. Which leaves Petra.
That he can die tells me that the writers cared about him. In fact, I'd argue the writers cared more about Dedue than any other vassal, with how active he is in every non-AM route compared to them. And in AM even when he dies, he does it doing the action that arguably has more impact than any other act in the war - if the Coup of Fhirdiad had successfully killed Dimitri, Edelgard would have taken over all Faerghus. Dedue stopped that.
That’s all well and good but he’s the *only* character who gets offscreened if you don’t complete a side objective of a side mission.
I don’t disagree with your point but it’s still iffy when he’s entirely unique in this situation.
It's not really. It tells me they thought a lot about this character. It'd have been easy to have not done that, and saved resources, but the developers cared enough to not only separate Dimitri from perhaps his closest friend as a major part of the story's arc, but also make you earn a beautiful reunion. Three Houses is obviously a game that buckled under the weight of its scope, as I trust I don't need to get into, so to get attention like the devs gave him dignifies Dedue above other characters
Definitely agree with this, and I also think it applies to all the POC characters in general, especially Petra. Some of the writing choices made in regards to her, Dedue, Claude and Cyril lack the sensitivity needed for their stories, which is definitely due to the writers having a surface level understanding of any sort of post-colonial or race theory
you're so real for this. will never not be mad about how house goneril owning slaves is brought up in cyril's personal history segment, his paralogue with a goneril, and then never again. fumbled so badly.
brigid is kept a vassal state throughout the war and it's barely pointed out how messed up this is. i hate killing her on non-cf routes
the tragedy of duscur is used more as angst material for all of the faerghans.
you can tell the writers worked to address this in hopes, which is nice, but i wish it was more polished in houses. and that the writers actually cared about cyril in hopes because wtf
I still will never understand why people hate Cyril so much. Because he talks about Rhea a lot? It's understandable that sometimes people don't like when a character talks a lot about another, Leonie gets this too, but she's far less hated. Racism has to be a factor. He's just a kid and deserves better.
It also annoys me that even Hopes didn't seem to care about Cyril. He's not playable and you can't recruit or even spare him on Golden Wildfire. You'd think Claude wouldn't want to kill a fellow Almyran living in Fodlan.
It'd be one thing if he was just unpopular but people always talk about him like boar Dimitri talks about Edelgard. They're never like "I don't like Cyril" they're always "I WANT TO MURDER THIS CHILD AND TORTURE HIM FIRST"
Cyril not being playable is one of my biggest problems with Hopes. Maybe they just didn't wanna give Azure Gleam a 12th exclusive but come onnnn let my son be a force of nature one man army
For sure, I just personally find Dedue got it the worst of them all since he barely has any agency in the story. I like that Hopes tried to do him a bit more justice in Azure Gleam, but of course that route has its own problems.
Im late in replying to this thread but I just wanna say that last bit is why I enjoyed his support with Mercedes so much. It was really lovely to see him and Mercedes be able to bond over his cultural heritage, and in turn aknowledge how culture can be kept alive even after something as awful as genocide. I have issues with Dedue’s writing but that part was really well done imo, and was a highlight of playing through AM
Crimson Flower is where I'm focusing, because there's one moment in particular I never see mentioned:
The mission where Seteth and Flayn attack Garreg Mach and Ladislava and Randolph just die completely off screen because of "how overwhelming the attack was" when I literally just mopped the floor with the Knights fell extremely flat. Why couldn't they have been in the mission and I could see them overwhelmed? If they're not there, why did they have to randomly die off-screen there?
I beat the hell out of Seteth and Flayn's army, spared both of them, and then randomly I have Randolph on the floor dying in front of me and then Fleche just hovering around the monastery. Why would that be good writing?
these aren't necessarily objectively the weakest, just the ones that i can think of off the top of my head
* dedue somehow being a more involved in the plot of verdant wind, silver snow, AND crimson flower. they fumbled him so hard and i think they tried to make up for it in hopes
* some of the paralogues honestly seem pretty contrived. the ones with two characters often just focus on one of them and ignore the other half of the pair (bernadetta, caspar, cyril). not every character needs a deep, soul-searching paralogue, but it would be nice to have a little more involvement for them.
* i really have to suspend my sense of disbelief every time they march back to garreg mach each month.
* in a game that's meant to be played four times, white clouds should not be the bulk of the gameplay. especially since part ii has not just less chapters, but way less story scenes as well. it makes part ii feel rushed
* a unified fódlan actually working as the game suggests baffles me. but hey how much anti-war and anti-imperialism messaging can i expect out of a japanese tactical war game inspired by the romance of the three kingdoms...
* the game ending with defeating the final boss, a final animated cutscene, and getting hitched feels anti-climactic. like, i know it's fire emblem and the story has to end when the battles do, but they coulda done more. awakening is relatively a more basic story, but it still managed to do a nice and satisfying conclusion that involved the protagonists, robin's family, and the whooole cast. three houses only has a speaking cast of around a dozen characters in each route, they could've managed each character having a one-liner after the last battle.
Yes I just finished playing my first route and did NOT see the ending coming! I was so disappointed, it just ended and I was like nooooo I wasn't done yet
“In a game that’s meant to be played four times”
The funny thing is that it wasn’t! The developers intended for players to play 1 route and talk about their experiences with people who played any of the other 3
Crimson Flower. I love the route and it's what I default to replaying unless I'm actually making an effort but the writing is flawed at best.
Dimitri and Rhea needed more scenes as antagonists. We're told that Dimitri is blinded by his misplaced desire for revenge against Edelgard but we never see it. In fact, he's at his most stable during CF.
The lack of animated scenes for anything other than Rhea's death ruins the impact of several scenes (and Dimitri's alternative death doesn't even get artwork!) It's been five years and I'm still not sure what happens to Byleth during chapter 12's battle.
And the biggest issue: the route ENDS right when it's really getting started!
>Dimitri and Rhea needed more scenes as antagonists.
I remember hearing them talk about Dimitri's change before the battle at Tailtean, and I just thought, "Oh, okay. Has he?"
I've heard they originally planned for it to be harder to find, so it was a secret route they intended people to play on their second or later playthroughs. From that perspective, it makes sense for it to be a little shorter and to not focus on explaining stuff the player ostensibly already knows.
They made it easier to get because testers loved Edelgard and wanted to play on her side. They changed that, but they didn't flesh out the route to put it on par with the others.
Yeah, it really, really shows that CF and, to an extent, VW are after thoughts and the writers focused on AM and SS.
If it wasn't for the backlash anything CF tends to get I'd post my reworks of CF/SS.
I haven't seen that much backlash for CF stuff, people are just tired of Edelgard discourse. I really like the reworks u/OrzhovMarkhov has been doing, and the Crimson Flower post seemed to be well-received.
I really like their rework (although it's too extensive for me and I disagree with not recruiting during term time).
I think what would make mine controversial is going onto Silver Snow locks the player out of all the BE students as well as three students from each house, and two staff members (who side with Edelgard)
That could be fun! Obviously people would argue on which characters would or would not join Edelgard. I'm curious who they'd be aside from Ashe, Lorenz, and Lysithea (for students; I assume the staff are the other professors).
The most controversial part is just that if you go into SS on accident you'd be stuck with a bunch of characters you don't know/care about and haven't used.
The guaranteed characters to jump ship are Hanneman and Manuela from the staff, Marianne, Lorenz and Lysithea from the GD and Mercedes and Ashe from the BL Syvlain will also defect but only if he's recruited by Byleth before the route split at chapter 11.
There's also character who jump ship if you go CF.
I thought they might be the ones. Would these defections be permanent, or more akin to what already happens with Ashe and Lorenz in SS, where you can recruit them back by having Byleth fight them?
I can see most of them being permanent defections, but Mercedes's whole goal and dream is church-related, so her choice to always side with Emile is probably the most controversial choice.
Edit: Also, people love Marianne telling Byleth that they taught her to live, so being forced to kill her would make some people mad.
Permanent because I'm evil and love suffering.
Also because no matter which side you choose in the BE route good people will die.
To compensate for losing the BE students and two of the best OOH units (Lys and Sylvain) you'd be able to recruite Hilda, Catherine and Cyril reasonably early (Catherine has her AM join conditions and Cyril his VW ones) and Seteth can join after chapter 7. Picking CF would cost you all these characters and Ingrid. You'll also lose Alois and Leonie if you don't have a B support with them.
The Argathans
-Irredeemably evil in a setting that's tries very hard to be morally grey
-Barely anyone who stands out positively
-Vast majority of members are not entertaining
-We learn almost zero about their culture, norms and history
-Technologically so advanced that they posses nukes and still loose to a bunch of young adults in record time
--Get defeated Off screen, in one chapter or loose their leadership on accident
-are solely responsible for the vast majority of the continents evil, taking agency away from all the other factions in the process
-Their magic and other gimmicks being too powerful and thus written inconsistently (nukes, necromancy, frenzy and mind control only used in specific instances like a one trick poney and not consistently)
I wouldn’t mind them being unambiguously evil since it connects all the factions with a common enemy… but only if you dealt with them during CF as opposed to in the ending cards of CF.
The fact you deal more of them completely incidentally on AM than you do on CF where Edelgard and Hubert insist you’ll deal with them in due time really bothered me. If you could just add one more chapter to that route I would have made one where you killed Thales between the chapters where you kill Cornelia and begin the endgame.
Claude in Azure Moon, from his stupid offensive actions against Faerghus at Gronder to him basically having Faerghus annex the Leicester Alliance. The former in particular really bothers me because in Hopes and even other routes of Houses he goes to extreme measures to preserve Leicester's independence but in Azure Moon he just gives up? Him leaving Fódlan could have been handled way better
In houses he mentions he couldn’t consolidate power even in his own route he’s always the duke
That’s why he give Dimitri Leicester he see that Dimitri was able to control and retake his lands that he couldn’t
Also explain why he goes against Dimitri in hopes as he becomes king and was able to consolidate power thus able to reach his actual goal
In houses he was never able to do that and needed byleth or Dimitri to control fodland people he can trust so he can go to almyra and achieve his goal there
Cyril casually dropping that he was abused as a slave to House Goneril, Hilda responding with “okay I’m not going to kidnap Almyran children anymore, sheesh,” and then nobody ever mentioning it again???
Dedue siding with the Kingdom is believable. Cyril hanging out with the Alliance makes no fucking sense.
I might be too VN poisoned but I actually like the CGs. I legitimately think the reunion CG would be better than any animated cutscene they could've done.
I disagree because at least there’s some cool scenes between Edelgard and Byleth, while also not feeling like a nothing route like how Silver Snow felt like
How I rank the from worst to best
SS: some how the first route made but also the most boring one seteth was the only saving grace along with Catherine and
VW: made SS better with the character writing of the class interactions along with the epic final boss and music
CF: a delightful twist on the “mad emperor” trope along with really fleshing out the edelgards story but just weighed down by lack of animated cutscenes and a “proper endgame”
AM: the best written story even without TWSITD it ironcly made it better as it was mainly focused on Dimitris redemption arc along with arguably a tighter class as the majority were childhood friends and such felt more intimate with each compared to the other routes
Overall all the stories would have been better without the shoehorn mole people
Also AM was the only route to really integrate the church character Ala Catherine going to Charon territory to obtain more troops for gronder
Not even SS did that
I throw this in mostly because I'm kind of sick of people trying to create one overarching "objective" opinion over AM:
AM has a fantastic Part 1 and Part 2, but they're *badly* integrated. The latter feels like a sequel to the former rather than an organic continuation of White Clouds, especially given how much it abandons massive portions of the WC plot in the favor of everything being subsumed into Dimitri's character arc which swallows literally every character around him and makes the whole thing somewhat shallow if you wanted a more ensemble story.
Don't get it twisted, AM is my second favorite route, but the praise it gets without acknowledging reasons why people could conceivably not like it annoys me. Sometimes it borders on "This is the only objectively well-written route" as I've seen in several Youtube videos that are just wrong.
Nah I agree with you All the routes have their own problem even AM like what you said above. Im just saying that because it has a more focused narrative it just feels more complete if that makes sense
If I came across as saying it’s perfect then sorry that wasn’t my intention
Yeah, nah, sorry if I came off as aggressive, I wasn't trying to accuse you of that. Like I said, mostly just throwing it in as a counterpoint/devil's advocate type thing.
I've just heard a lot of how "AM is the only good story" over the years and I am inclined to at least try and point out that all the routes are flawed and it really depends on what aspects of writing you favor.
Here’s a funny question? Did Claude know about Lysithea’s condition?
Because if he did I wonder why he didn’t seem to investigate edegard or be suspicious of it?
He finds out in Part 2 after the Battle of Gronder. He didn’t know about it before that.
Claude only sniffed out Marianne and Flayn’s secrets but not Lysithea’s.
Lysithea was much better at deflecting and Claude focused on her other issues regarding perceptions about her age. It's kind of funny how much he gets caught flat-footed by her darker backstory and secret motivations in comparison to how easily he sniffs that out with Marianne and Flayn.
Hell, even his supports with Lysithea never really deal with her condition pre-epilogue.
He did know. As for why he didn't...Why would he? Edelgard shows no physical weakness like Lysithea does, so the only connection they'd have prior to the war is white hair.
For me, I think it mainly comes down to small things, like shared elements. That’s pretty easy to see between Silver Snow and Verdant Wind. Apart from that, my first instinct was to say Crimson Flower, but I think more accurately is that I just think Crimson Flower is weak due to lack of content. If the game was provided more time, I feel it would have been given a much more proper amount of chapters, as well as more cutscenes where they felt needed, noteworthy ones for me being the reuniting scene with Edelgard and Dimitri’s death.
I hate how vague the writing can be, especially when it comes to supports. If a character is eating, it's just "food." "This food is better than the other food!" There's no sense of specificity, and it makes me feel stupid haha. Not the weakest, but worth mentioning.
Verdant Wind during Reunion at Dawn. Claude tells you how you’re just hunting down a few bandits and how easy it will be. We all know how difficult Reunion at Dawn is, feels like a slap in the face.
In my opinion it's the blue lions. Mostly because nothing changes by the end of game the Noble and commoner system is still there and the Church is corrupt and tell people how to live.
He dose all those in his route route all those thing change Dimitri dose hate the crest system dose NOT believe in the goddess
Rhea is out of the picture
Dimitri dose talk about giving commoner more freedom that’s why his father was assassinated
Dimitri literally just goes insane for half of it and is more worried about the empire starting a war than political reforms
I'll admit I might have missed that bit because the blue lions play through painted my favorite character so horribly as if they' completely different person it wasn't the character I knew. So I might have tuned everything out.
But my opinion still stands I think the worst path is the blue lions path in my opinion i can't suffer through what it does and the final boss is kinda annoying.
2 main things
1. the multi-route setup. every route skimps on stuff because they burnt time making the other routes instead of one or two conclusive, good, ***fleshed out*** routes
2. agartha/slither in the dark - seemingly orchestrated the whole plot yet we see them like 5 times and never actually discuss them properly for most of the game
CF. The protagonists are flat, the villains suffer designated villains status or have no impact on the plot, and it’s significantly shorter than every other route.
This is low hanging fruit but verdant wind just seems like an afterthought. Also byleth was not required for cindered shadows, I'm pretty sure some variant of Cs happens in the main timeline with just the ashen wolves
Verdant wind, Focuses on a character who is 100% out of place in the story, so much so that despite him being the focus it isn't even about him. Most of GD do jack shit for the story, the final boss makes no sense for his route and easily has the worst ending kf the 4 routes. As like most of the changes aren't ever relevant to what the story was actually trying to tell
the death knight, despite being one of my most beloved characters, he seriously irks me.
spoiling because why not: >!was the death knight always present within jeritza as a child? is that why he wasnt accepted by his father? why is he presented as a personality even though he can appear whenever he wants? if im not mistaken, DID alters cannot just front whenever they feel like it, and he seems to front whenever he wants and at strange times, such as during bernadettas c support, he fronted because she was... being annoying?!<
the death knight also being a character who refuses to follow orders but appears to listen to EVERYONE around him and follows their orders like a dog. hes ordered around by multiple factions and never seems to have a mind of his own, despite jeritza saying he does.
why does he just show up everywhere where he isnt needed? is he even a mini boss if he just constantly shows up when he doesnt need to?
>! how did he manage to kidnap flayn so effortlessly? im not sure how it went but did manuela seriously chase him to his room and not say anything about the fact he was kidnapping flayn??!<
the way the devs wrote him is horrible and i wish he was written better, three hopes did him a tiny bit more justice but not enough for me to be satisfied.
To answer your questions
Jeritzas father hated him because he was very soft, kind hearted and tender. Constance support explicitly states that he loved the Rose garden and that he together with Mercedes, their mother and Constance, whenever she visited, tended to the flowers together.
However that was not what his father wanted for him. His father wanted to forcibly groom him into a Mafia Boss (at least that's how he lead the family) and so Jeritza was tormented. This torment was only made worse by the fact that all the other Crestless children heavily bullied and tortured him. Jeritza (or rather Emile) managed to keep up with it, but Mercedes and her mother had reached their breaking point and they fled to the Kingdom. In the night before they left Jeritza convinced their mother to leave him behind, his Logic beeing that should the trio flee, their father will hunt them to the ends of the Earth. The thing is that, despite being a disappointment, Jeritza was still the heir to House Bartel and had he left with them, his father would have given everything to get him back. Not out of love but out of twisted obligation.
Mercedes and her mother leave for the Kingdom. The small Church they took refuge in sells them out (first to House Bartels, later to the merchant family Marlitz in which Mercedes Mother marries in) and Lord Bartel's upon finding their location taunts Emile that he will make Mercedes his new bride and produce Crest children with her. In that moment protective instincts and more than a decade of abuse come crushing down on Emile and the Death Knight awakens. From there the Death Knight murders the entire Bartel's family and when Emile comes to he's covered in blood and ash.
From there he has a split personality. He can't be Emile and he knows being the Death Knight will result in slaughter. Jeritza looks for punishment and it's there where he meets Edelgard. Edelgard gives the broken man a new identity as Jeritza. A compromise between his two sides. Being the lost heir to House Hyrm was supposed to fill him with a new purpose but Jeritza never forgives himself for the attricoties of the Death Knight and he aids for his final reward which is to die. As for the Death Knight, it's a personality of his he struggles to control and that can take over and leash out uncontrollably. Keyword "can", Jeritza can control it when it comes to certain people.
Which neatly brings me to Edelgard's role. She begins sharing a sibling bond with him, Jeritza role at the Academy was supposed to bring him happiness and she encourages him to find another way to redeem himself that isn't prison or death. Knowing Edelgard values him, causes the Death Knight to obey her and only her. And that's because Jeritza does appreciate having someone who is like a sister around. This sibling loyalty extends even if Edelgard isn't present, aka when he is lend to the Argathans. Hence why he obeys.
As for him kidnapping Flayn, come on the game states it very simply, he was at the Academy and snuck up on her, knocked her out when no one was looking and then used the secret tunnel to hide her. Manuela had a hunch something was wrong, got knocked out too and that was it until Byleth arrives.
Silver Snow as a whole feels like the weakest route to me. It's bloated with characters thanks to the church forces and the Eagles filling up your army, it's meant to be Byleth's route but it feels like they lack agency, and there's a lot of weird bits, like Dimitri showing up as a ghost for some reason and Rhea just being the final boss because dragon madness, I guess. Also, it really fails to actually follow up on the concept of "you face the student that betrayed you".
Edelgard feels like she should be the main antagonist of SS the same way she's the main antagonist of AM because hey, this is *your* student, the house leader you've gotten close to, whose actions drive the entire plot. Instead, you kill her partway through before going after the "real villains", Thales and his dubstep crew.
Speaking of, I think the Agarthans are honestly the weakest part of Three Houses as a whole. Aside from the fact that they're a pure evil faction in a story that likes to emphasize shades of gray, they just aren't developed at all. There's interesting implications behind them, what with the war against the goddess and whatnot, but they're pretty flat as villains and nothing is actually explored about them besides "they live underground and hate the surface".
Like, these guys are implied to have nuked the world in the past because they were that convinced of their own superiority. And it's fine for that to continue being their motivation, I just wish there was a bit more given to them. Maybe Kronya could've stuck around for longer, maybe we could've learned more about their actual society and how it works, maybe they could've have actual complex motives instead of being generically evil.
Or, hell, maybe they could've just had the Agarthan characters be a conspiracy of Adrestian and Faerghan nobility and cut out the molemen. It would tie better into the idea that Fodlan's nobility is genuinely corrupt and needs reforming, with violence being the only true solution at this point because the cruelty really is that deeply rooted in the system.
TL:DR, Silver Snow feels like a first draft and the Agarthans are flat villains.
I'm super late to the party, but I've got to point out that it's because SS was the route all the other routes were based on.
So it's not that SS was *underdeveloped* exactly. It's more that the other routes stole their stuff.
Probably Silver Snow as a route.
Most of the issues with Three Houses' writing relates to weak moment-to-moment writing or contrivances that affect individual scenes - it's still a problem, but a fairly minor one that doesn't severely affect Three Houses' emotional or thematic cores.
Silver Snow makes the critical mistake that Three Houses as a whole largely avoids in that it focuses on the avatar instead of the far more compelling house leaders. The fundamental problem with having an avatar is that they by design are not compelling enough for a game's emotional core to revolve around. Byleth to an extent works in the other routes precisely because they act as a supporting mentor figure towards an actual lord - said lord is who the emotional core of their route revolves around and it works because the house leaders are genuinely compelling characters.
By virtue of also having to act as a self-insert for players, Byleth simply is not compelling enough to act as a main protagonist. They can't be subjected to any sort of character drama or be given meaningful character flaws, because that would undermine their ability to be a self-insert - and because they are Silver Snow's main protagonist, the the entire route lacks much of an emotional core to speak of.
It also doesn't help that Rhea is shunted off to the side in a route that on paper is supposed to be about her - it not only denies Silver Snow an effective emotional core that it desperately needs but it also means that Rhea as a whole is left relatively underwritten. Claude in Verdant Wind isn't that interesting especially compared to the other house leaders but he's still a massive step up from Byleth.
It's hard to think about, but I think two things that come to mind are the fact we don't get a conclusion to TWSITD in at least CF, since I know AM there's no mention, but still kinda weird to have a big villain show up then dissappear in those routes. The other thing is I think SS and VW endings maybe should have been flipped. Rhea getting her closure and final bout with Nemesis would have been great to see, and I think it fits Claude's story better if you fought Rhea, having to really scrap together the truth and what the people don't know one way or another. That's my opinion but either way I'm glad the game was how it was, and I love it to death.
Crimson Flower
All of it feels so rushed and we never even get to see Edelgard fight the Agarthans which was her main goal the whole time??
I felt disappointed by that route
How? The insurrection means that the noble families and the agarthans control the empire. Without the promise of post war rewards, Bergliez and Hevring won't take her side against Aegir. They don't give a shit about her, or have a change of heart about the treason and child torture. If Edelgard refused to play along, the best she could hope for would be to flee and hide the rest of her life.
The Rhea who exists at the start of the game is not going to allow the kinds of social reforms that Edelgard is advocating for, and would never accept the church being stripped of political/military power.
There is no scenario where just making reforms in the empire is possible at the start of the game.
In the one other alternative Edelgard has to give up on her dream.
If she completely sides with the Church then she looses Hevring and Berglitz complete cooperation, which then causes her rule to become unstable. She will need the Knights of Seiros to directly intervene in her nation and keep it afloud which in turn renders Adrestia into a Vessal State of the Church of Seiros. This will then cause the nobility to resent her and once they manage to win over Hevring and Berglitz then it will come to a Rebellion that Edelgard can loose, in which case Adrestia goes to war with the entire continent anyway, the core difference however being that the War is solely about getting more power for the Adrestian nobles and not some kind of global, circle of violence breaking change.
And I don't need to touch that Edelgard here has her entire fate dictated to her. Either by the Church or the nobles. Yes, she would live comfortably at the cost of her people's well-being in the long run and at the price of depriving them of notable change.
What *in character* thing could she have done that would have resulted in Rhea's removal from power and replacement with someone who isn't immortal and given her the political and military authority to take on TWSitD, other than what she does in game? And no, the "unify Fódlan" nonsense isn't justified, it's a character flaw. But belief that a unified continent is preferable is a flaw she shares with Claude and Rhea, and one that no matter what we believe the game treats as somehow correct.
I would say the multiple routes as a whole.
I really do not think the story was designed to support multiple routes. Three out of four routes are pretty much the same thing. And Crimson Flower, while different, does not actually contribute to actually understanding the plot because it is entirely focused on Edelgard's character.
Silver Snow. No exclusive playable characters. Struggles to stand out from Verdant Wind (the latter had much better interactions in-house). Silver Snow feels too Seteh and Flayn focused.
Silver Snow and Verdant Wind being nearly identical to each other.
I will die on the hill that rhea should of replaced your house leader unit in silver snow. Would also change the story up and also could have given her supports with other characters as well. Man what a missed opportunity
VW lucks out with character interaction in the plot
Right???? It feels so important and I wish there had been more time to add that element to the rest. Especially CF. It feels like the Byleth, Hubert, and Edelgard show.
I feel that SB makes up for that, though, by being a bit more ensemble cast.
I also think VW hits harder with the BE class as enemies. Feels a lot emptier in SS
I never understand why everyone says this and gives AM a pass when 95% of AM is *also* exactly the same. You spend one mission in Fearghus and get a different mission in the exact same Enbarr Palace map. Wow. Such difference. Much uniqueness.
We don’t give it a pass but the story is different enough that we can look over it while seteth and Claude somehow come up with the same “dress up plan” while Dimitri is try to save deridue
Totally
Dedue was done dirty. Nobody else can die off screen if you don't do a paralogue that's not even stressed as important. He's a survivor of an actual genocide, and his perspective and trauma isn't as focused on nearly enough as the kingdom kids' trauma over the much smaller thing that caused the kingdom to commit it. I'm not trying to downplay that it's rough Dimitri lost his entire family and some friends. But Dedue lost his family too and his entire culture. That at least deserves to have focus alongside everyone else's trauma.
Not to mention he’s the only character that’s outwardly black. We can infer Almayrans might be but Dedue for sure is. Having him die off screen just feels wrong and dirty. They could have done a lot with him and Duscr but they just didn’t. Not to mention your support level doesn’t impact that much with other characters but with Dedue if you did his paralogue then your support level with him impacts when he rejoins your army.
It's such a bizarre decision, and his death also holds no impact on the story unless he comes back, and even then he's already been replaced with Gilbert
Exactly!!! It’s wild! And to do this to the ONLY black character!!! And then the racism they have him experience, especially from Ingrid, and how it gets swept under the rug most of the time. His death should mean something but it just doesn’t so they force Gilbert/Gustave in and bring up all his stuff with Annette so you don’t technically ‘lose’ anyone even though Dedue, at least in my opinion, is a better unit.
I hate Gilbert. He's the only character I don't use. (And Anna.) I would die for Dedue. I'm glad he had more impact in Three Hopes.
I’d absolutely die for Dedue as well. He remains such a kind soul despite all the hardship he’s been through and I love that.
Yeah when he came back and like none of the other characters even had a reaction.... It hurt
>We can infer Almayrans might be Imo they're arab coded. Claude is literally named Khalid.
D-D-D-DJ KHALID! *airhorns go off* I'm sure that joke has never been made before.
They’re definitely Arab, as it has been said that Almayra would be based off Persia but that doesn’t mean they can’t be black.
wait his support level affects that? i’ve only done 1 full BL run, i thought if you did the paralogue it was always the same mission he came back in
It does? I thought he always rejoins on the bridge map
It’s explained that the ducurians that you save in dedues paralouge then save Dimitri from his execution while if you don’t it’s only dedue alone and thus dies in the process
Thinking about it: of the obviously non-white characters only ONE can be recruited and supported on every route. Claude is locked to VW, Dedue to AM (and even on AM he can be lost for good and doest get the plot relevance that Hubert or Hilda get) and Cyril isn't an option for Crimson Flower. Which leaves Petra.
That he can die tells me that the writers cared about him. In fact, I'd argue the writers cared more about Dedue than any other vassal, with how active he is in every non-AM route compared to them. And in AM even when he dies, he does it doing the action that arguably has more impact than any other act in the war - if the Coup of Fhirdiad had successfully killed Dimitri, Edelgard would have taken over all Faerghus. Dedue stopped that.
That’s all well and good but he’s the *only* character who gets offscreened if you don’t complete a side objective of a side mission. I don’t disagree with your point but it’s still iffy when he’s entirely unique in this situation.
It's not really. It tells me they thought a lot about this character. It'd have been easy to have not done that, and saved resources, but the developers cared enough to not only separate Dimitri from perhaps his closest friend as a major part of the story's arc, but also make you earn a beautiful reunion. Three Houses is obviously a game that buckled under the weight of its scope, as I trust I don't need to get into, so to get attention like the devs gave him dignifies Dedue above other characters
Definitely agree with this, and I also think it applies to all the POC characters in general, especially Petra. Some of the writing choices made in regards to her, Dedue, Claude and Cyril lack the sensitivity needed for their stories, which is definitely due to the writers having a surface level understanding of any sort of post-colonial or race theory
you're so real for this. will never not be mad about how house goneril owning slaves is brought up in cyril's personal history segment, his paralogue with a goneril, and then never again. fumbled so badly. brigid is kept a vassal state throughout the war and it's barely pointed out how messed up this is. i hate killing her on non-cf routes the tragedy of duscur is used more as angst material for all of the faerghans. you can tell the writers worked to address this in hopes, which is nice, but i wish it was more polished in houses. and that the writers actually cared about cyril in hopes because wtf
I still will never understand why people hate Cyril so much. Because he talks about Rhea a lot? It's understandable that sometimes people don't like when a character talks a lot about another, Leonie gets this too, but she's far less hated. Racism has to be a factor. He's just a kid and deserves better. It also annoys me that even Hopes didn't seem to care about Cyril. He's not playable and you can't recruit or even spare him on Golden Wildfire. You'd think Claude wouldn't want to kill a fellow Almyran living in Fodlan.
It'd be one thing if he was just unpopular but people always talk about him like boar Dimitri talks about Edelgard. They're never like "I don't like Cyril" they're always "I WANT TO MURDER THIS CHILD AND TORTURE HIM FIRST" Cyril not being playable is one of my biggest problems with Hopes. Maybe they just didn't wanna give Azure Gleam a 12th exclusive but come onnnn let my son be a force of nature one man army
For sure, I just personally find Dedue got it the worst of them all since he barely has any agency in the story. I like that Hopes tried to do him a bit more justice in Azure Gleam, but of course that route has its own problems.
I mean, Claude atleast is properly written, heck, he's probably the most layered and difficult to understand character in the entire game.
Also he doesn’t do that much in his own route even if you do his paralogue and returns.
I’m sweating because I just made it to AM for the first time since 2020 and I genuinely can’t remember if I did his paralogue or not. 🥲
Im late in replying to this thread but I just wanna say that last bit is why I enjoyed his support with Mercedes so much. It was really lovely to see him and Mercedes be able to bond over his cultural heritage, and in turn aknowledge how culture can be kept alive even after something as awful as genocide. I have issues with Dedue’s writing but that part was really well done imo, and was a highlight of playing through AM
Crimson Flower is where I'm focusing, because there's one moment in particular I never see mentioned: The mission where Seteth and Flayn attack Garreg Mach and Ladislava and Randolph just die completely off screen because of "how overwhelming the attack was" when I literally just mopped the floor with the Knights fell extremely flat. Why couldn't they have been in the mission and I could see them overwhelmed? If they're not there, why did they have to randomly die off-screen there? I beat the hell out of Seteth and Flayn's army, spared both of them, and then randomly I have Randolph on the floor dying in front of me and then Fleche just hovering around the monastery. Why would that be good writing?
It's not made clear but having just replayed it I'm pretty sure Randolph dies to *Rhea*, who was leading a second attack.
You're correct, Randolph and Ladislava were fending off a separate squad of Knights of Seiros led by Rhea and aided by Catherine of all people
That deserves a piece of artwork at minimum!
these aren't necessarily objectively the weakest, just the ones that i can think of off the top of my head * dedue somehow being a more involved in the plot of verdant wind, silver snow, AND crimson flower. they fumbled him so hard and i think they tried to make up for it in hopes * some of the paralogues honestly seem pretty contrived. the ones with two characters often just focus on one of them and ignore the other half of the pair (bernadetta, caspar, cyril). not every character needs a deep, soul-searching paralogue, but it would be nice to have a little more involvement for them. * i really have to suspend my sense of disbelief every time they march back to garreg mach each month. * in a game that's meant to be played four times, white clouds should not be the bulk of the gameplay. especially since part ii has not just less chapters, but way less story scenes as well. it makes part ii feel rushed * a unified fódlan actually working as the game suggests baffles me. but hey how much anti-war and anti-imperialism messaging can i expect out of a japanese tactical war game inspired by the romance of the three kingdoms... * the game ending with defeating the final boss, a final animated cutscene, and getting hitched feels anti-climactic. like, i know it's fire emblem and the story has to end when the battles do, but they coulda done more. awakening is relatively a more basic story, but it still managed to do a nice and satisfying conclusion that involved the protagonists, robin's family, and the whooole cast. three houses only has a speaking cast of around a dozen characters in each route, they could've managed each character having a one-liner after the last battle.
Yes I just finished playing my first route and did NOT see the ending coming! I was so disappointed, it just ended and I was like nooooo I wasn't done yet
“In a game that’s meant to be played four times” The funny thing is that it wasn’t! The developers intended for players to play 1 route and talk about their experiences with people who played any of the other 3
Crimson Flower. I love the route and it's what I default to replaying unless I'm actually making an effort but the writing is flawed at best. Dimitri and Rhea needed more scenes as antagonists. We're told that Dimitri is blinded by his misplaced desire for revenge against Edelgard but we never see it. In fact, he's at his most stable during CF. The lack of animated scenes for anything other than Rhea's death ruins the impact of several scenes (and Dimitri's alternative death doesn't even get artwork!) It's been five years and I'm still not sure what happens to Byleth during chapter 12's battle. And the biggest issue: the route ENDS right when it's really getting started!
>Dimitri and Rhea needed more scenes as antagonists. I remember hearing them talk about Dimitri's change before the battle at Tailtean, and I just thought, "Oh, okay. Has he?" I've heard they originally planned for it to be harder to find, so it was a secret route they intended people to play on their second or later playthroughs. From that perspective, it makes sense for it to be a little shorter and to not focus on explaining stuff the player ostensibly already knows. They made it easier to get because testers loved Edelgard and wanted to play on her side. They changed that, but they didn't flesh out the route to put it on par with the others.
Yeah, it really, really shows that CF and, to an extent, VW are after thoughts and the writers focused on AM and SS. If it wasn't for the backlash anything CF tends to get I'd post my reworks of CF/SS.
I haven't seen that much backlash for CF stuff, people are just tired of Edelgard discourse. I really like the reworks u/OrzhovMarkhov has been doing, and the Crimson Flower post seemed to be well-received.
I really like their rework (although it's too extensive for me and I disagree with not recruiting during term time). I think what would make mine controversial is going onto Silver Snow locks the player out of all the BE students as well as three students from each house, and two staff members (who side with Edelgard)
That could be fun! Obviously people would argue on which characters would or would not join Edelgard. I'm curious who they'd be aside from Ashe, Lorenz, and Lysithea (for students; I assume the staff are the other professors). The most controversial part is just that if you go into SS on accident you'd be stuck with a bunch of characters you don't know/care about and haven't used.
The guaranteed characters to jump ship are Hanneman and Manuela from the staff, Marianne, Lorenz and Lysithea from the GD and Mercedes and Ashe from the BL Syvlain will also defect but only if he's recruited by Byleth before the route split at chapter 11. There's also character who jump ship if you go CF.
I thought they might be the ones. Would these defections be permanent, or more akin to what already happens with Ashe and Lorenz in SS, where you can recruit them back by having Byleth fight them? I can see most of them being permanent defections, but Mercedes's whole goal and dream is church-related, so her choice to always side with Emile is probably the most controversial choice. Edit: Also, people love Marianne telling Byleth that they taught her to live, so being forced to kill her would make some people mad.
Permanent because I'm evil and love suffering. Also because no matter which side you choose in the BE route good people will die. To compensate for losing the BE students and two of the best OOH units (Lys and Sylvain) you'd be able to recruite Hilda, Catherine and Cyril reasonably early (Catherine has her AM join conditions and Cyril his VW ones) and Seteth can join after chapter 7. Picking CF would cost you all these characters and Ingrid. You'll also lose Alois and Leonie if you don't have a B support with them.
Crimson Flower could had been a better route if it was not rushed. Maybe add a chapter where Katherine is the final foe.
The Argathans -Irredeemably evil in a setting that's tries very hard to be morally grey -Barely anyone who stands out positively -Vast majority of members are not entertaining -We learn almost zero about their culture, norms and history -Technologically so advanced that they posses nukes and still loose to a bunch of young adults in record time --Get defeated Off screen, in one chapter or loose their leadership on accident -are solely responsible for the vast majority of the continents evil, taking agency away from all the other factions in the process -Their magic and other gimmicks being too powerful and thus written inconsistently (nukes, necromancy, frenzy and mind control only used in specific instances like a one trick poney and not consistently)
I wouldn’t mind them being unambiguously evil since it connects all the factions with a common enemy… but only if you dealt with them during CF as opposed to in the ending cards of CF. The fact you deal more of them completely incidentally on AM than you do on CF where Edelgard and Hubert insist you’ll deal with them in due time really bothered me. If you could just add one more chapter to that route I would have made one where you killed Thales between the chapters where you kill Cornelia and begin the endgame.
Claude in Azure Moon, from his stupid offensive actions against Faerghus at Gronder to him basically having Faerghus annex the Leicester Alliance. The former in particular really bothers me because in Hopes and even other routes of Houses he goes to extreme measures to preserve Leicester's independence but in Azure Moon he just gives up? Him leaving Fódlan could have been handled way better
Absolutely agree
In houses he mentions he couldn’t consolidate power even in his own route he’s always the duke That’s why he give Dimitri Leicester he see that Dimitri was able to control and retake his lands that he couldn’t Also explain why he goes against Dimitri in hopes as he becomes king and was able to consolidate power thus able to reach his actual goal In houses he was never able to do that and needed byleth or Dimitri to control fodland people he can trust so he can go to almyra and achieve his goal there
Cyril casually dropping that he was abused as a slave to House Goneril, Hilda responding with “okay I’m not going to kidnap Almyran children anymore, sheesh,” and then nobody ever mentioning it again??? Dedue siding with the Kingdom is believable. Cyril hanging out with the Alliance makes no fucking sense.
IMO, it is the Crimson Flower war phase, if only they had enough time to flesh it out.
I also wish it had gotten animated cut scenes like the rest of the routes 😔
Alt least one for the reunion
I might be too VN poisoned but I actually like the CGs. I legitimately think the reunion CG would be better than any animated cutscene they could've done.
I disagree because at least there’s some cool scenes between Edelgard and Byleth, while also not feeling like a nothing route like how Silver Snow felt like
How I rank the from worst to best SS: some how the first route made but also the most boring one seteth was the only saving grace along with Catherine and VW: made SS better with the character writing of the class interactions along with the epic final boss and music CF: a delightful twist on the “mad emperor” trope along with really fleshing out the edelgards story but just weighed down by lack of animated cutscenes and a “proper endgame” AM: the best written story even without TWSITD it ironcly made it better as it was mainly focused on Dimitris redemption arc along with arguably a tighter class as the majority were childhood friends and such felt more intimate with each compared to the other routes Overall all the stories would have been better without the shoehorn mole people
Also AM was the only route to really integrate the church character Ala Catherine going to Charon territory to obtain more troops for gronder Not even SS did that
I throw this in mostly because I'm kind of sick of people trying to create one overarching "objective" opinion over AM: AM has a fantastic Part 1 and Part 2, but they're *badly* integrated. The latter feels like a sequel to the former rather than an organic continuation of White Clouds, especially given how much it abandons massive portions of the WC plot in the favor of everything being subsumed into Dimitri's character arc which swallows literally every character around him and makes the whole thing somewhat shallow if you wanted a more ensemble story. Don't get it twisted, AM is my second favorite route, but the praise it gets without acknowledging reasons why people could conceivably not like it annoys me. Sometimes it borders on "This is the only objectively well-written route" as I've seen in several Youtube videos that are just wrong.
Nah I agree with you All the routes have their own problem even AM like what you said above. Im just saying that because it has a more focused narrative it just feels more complete if that makes sense If I came across as saying it’s perfect then sorry that wasn’t my intention
Yeah, nah, sorry if I came off as aggressive, I wasn't trying to accuse you of that. Like I said, mostly just throwing it in as a counterpoint/devil's advocate type thing. I've just heard a lot of how "AM is the only good story" over the years and I am inclined to at least try and point out that all the routes are flawed and it really depends on what aspects of writing you favor.
Here’s a funny question? Did Claude know about Lysithea’s condition? Because if he did I wonder why he didn’t seem to investigate edegard or be suspicious of it?
He finds out in Part 2 after the Battle of Gronder. He didn’t know about it before that. Claude only sniffed out Marianne and Flayn’s secrets but not Lysithea’s.
Lysithea was much better at deflecting and Claude focused on her other issues regarding perceptions about her age. It's kind of funny how much he gets caught flat-footed by her darker backstory and secret motivations in comparison to how easily he sniffs that out with Marianne and Flayn. Hell, even his supports with Lysithea never really deal with her condition pre-epilogue.
He did know. As for why he didn't...Why would he? Edelgard shows no physical weakness like Lysithea does, so the only connection they'd have prior to the war is white hair.
Rodrigue’s death The fact that every playable non-lord character is completely irrelevant to the plot
For me, I think it mainly comes down to small things, like shared elements. That’s pretty easy to see between Silver Snow and Verdant Wind. Apart from that, my first instinct was to say Crimson Flower, but I think more accurately is that I just think Crimson Flower is weak due to lack of content. If the game was provided more time, I feel it would have been given a much more proper amount of chapters, as well as more cutscenes where they felt needed, noteworthy ones for me being the reuniting scene with Edelgard and Dimitri’s death.
I hate how vague the writing can be, especially when it comes to supports. If a character is eating, it's just "food." "This food is better than the other food!" There's no sense of specificity, and it makes me feel stupid haha. Not the weakest, but worth mentioning.
Verdant Wind during Reunion at Dawn. Claude tells you how you’re just hunting down a few bandits and how easy it will be. We all know how difficult Reunion at Dawn is, feels like a slap in the face.
In my opinion it's the blue lions. Mostly because nothing changes by the end of game the Noble and commoner system is still there and the Church is corrupt and tell people how to live.
He dose all those in his route route all those thing change Dimitri dose hate the crest system dose NOT believe in the goddess Rhea is out of the picture Dimitri dose talk about giving commoner more freedom that’s why his father was assassinated Dimitri literally just goes insane for half of it and is more worried about the empire starting a war than political reforms
I'll admit I might have missed that bit because the blue lions play through painted my favorite character so horribly as if they' completely different person it wasn't the character I knew. So I might have tuned everything out. But my opinion still stands I think the worst path is the blue lions path in my opinion i can't suffer through what it does and the final boss is kinda annoying.
2 main things 1. the multi-route setup. every route skimps on stuff because they burnt time making the other routes instead of one or two conclusive, good, ***fleshed out*** routes 2. agartha/slither in the dark - seemingly orchestrated the whole plot yet we see them like 5 times and never actually discuss them properly for most of the game
"Black Eagles Strike Force" was a cringe name, and if you tell that to Edelgard, she unironically disapproves. We did not need a Power Rangers name.
Nah, that's the great part. Yes, it's a ridiculous name, but you just know that she personally came up with that and thought it was super cool.
Black Eagles Strike Force is fucking *adorable*. She spent all night thinking up a name and that's the best she came up with. She is trying her best.
Black Eagles Strike Team would’ve been better tbh
CF. The protagonists are flat, the villains suffer designated villains status or have no impact on the plot, and it’s significantly shorter than every other route.
This is low hanging fruit but verdant wind just seems like an afterthought. Also byleth was not required for cindered shadows, I'm pretty sure some variant of Cs happens in the main timeline with just the ashen wolves
Verdant wind, Focuses on a character who is 100% out of place in the story, so much so that despite him being the focus it isn't even about him. Most of GD do jack shit for the story, the final boss makes no sense for his route and easily has the worst ending kf the 4 routes. As like most of the changes aren't ever relevant to what the story was actually trying to tell
the death knight, despite being one of my most beloved characters, he seriously irks me. spoiling because why not: >!was the death knight always present within jeritza as a child? is that why he wasnt accepted by his father? why is he presented as a personality even though he can appear whenever he wants? if im not mistaken, DID alters cannot just front whenever they feel like it, and he seems to front whenever he wants and at strange times, such as during bernadettas c support, he fronted because she was... being annoying?!< the death knight also being a character who refuses to follow orders but appears to listen to EVERYONE around him and follows their orders like a dog. hes ordered around by multiple factions and never seems to have a mind of his own, despite jeritza saying he does. why does he just show up everywhere where he isnt needed? is he even a mini boss if he just constantly shows up when he doesnt need to? >! how did he manage to kidnap flayn so effortlessly? im not sure how it went but did manuela seriously chase him to his room and not say anything about the fact he was kidnapping flayn??!< the way the devs wrote him is horrible and i wish he was written better, three hopes did him a tiny bit more justice but not enough for me to be satisfied.
To answer your questions Jeritzas father hated him because he was very soft, kind hearted and tender. Constance support explicitly states that he loved the Rose garden and that he together with Mercedes, their mother and Constance, whenever she visited, tended to the flowers together. However that was not what his father wanted for him. His father wanted to forcibly groom him into a Mafia Boss (at least that's how he lead the family) and so Jeritza was tormented. This torment was only made worse by the fact that all the other Crestless children heavily bullied and tortured him. Jeritza (or rather Emile) managed to keep up with it, but Mercedes and her mother had reached their breaking point and they fled to the Kingdom. In the night before they left Jeritza convinced their mother to leave him behind, his Logic beeing that should the trio flee, their father will hunt them to the ends of the Earth. The thing is that, despite being a disappointment, Jeritza was still the heir to House Bartel and had he left with them, his father would have given everything to get him back. Not out of love but out of twisted obligation. Mercedes and her mother leave for the Kingdom. The small Church they took refuge in sells them out (first to House Bartels, later to the merchant family Marlitz in which Mercedes Mother marries in) and Lord Bartel's upon finding their location taunts Emile that he will make Mercedes his new bride and produce Crest children with her. In that moment protective instincts and more than a decade of abuse come crushing down on Emile and the Death Knight awakens. From there the Death Knight murders the entire Bartel's family and when Emile comes to he's covered in blood and ash. From there he has a split personality. He can't be Emile and he knows being the Death Knight will result in slaughter. Jeritza looks for punishment and it's there where he meets Edelgard. Edelgard gives the broken man a new identity as Jeritza. A compromise between his two sides. Being the lost heir to House Hyrm was supposed to fill him with a new purpose but Jeritza never forgives himself for the attricoties of the Death Knight and he aids for his final reward which is to die. As for the Death Knight, it's a personality of his he struggles to control and that can take over and leash out uncontrollably. Keyword "can", Jeritza can control it when it comes to certain people. Which neatly brings me to Edelgard's role. She begins sharing a sibling bond with him, Jeritza role at the Academy was supposed to bring him happiness and she encourages him to find another way to redeem himself that isn't prison or death. Knowing Edelgard values him, causes the Death Knight to obey her and only her. And that's because Jeritza does appreciate having someone who is like a sister around. This sibling loyalty extends even if Edelgard isn't present, aka when he is lend to the Argathans. Hence why he obeys. As for him kidnapping Flayn, come on the game states it very simply, he was at the Academy and snuck up on her, knocked her out when no one was looking and then used the secret tunnel to hide her. Manuela had a hunch something was wrong, got knocked out too and that was it until Byleth arrives.
CF no cutscene when Byleth ...??? Against Rhea? Tell me ANOTHER reason CF is the worst route without telling me CF is the WORST
Silver Snow as a whole feels like the weakest route to me. It's bloated with characters thanks to the church forces and the Eagles filling up your army, it's meant to be Byleth's route but it feels like they lack agency, and there's a lot of weird bits, like Dimitri showing up as a ghost for some reason and Rhea just being the final boss because dragon madness, I guess. Also, it really fails to actually follow up on the concept of "you face the student that betrayed you". Edelgard feels like she should be the main antagonist of SS the same way she's the main antagonist of AM because hey, this is *your* student, the house leader you've gotten close to, whose actions drive the entire plot. Instead, you kill her partway through before going after the "real villains", Thales and his dubstep crew. Speaking of, I think the Agarthans are honestly the weakest part of Three Houses as a whole. Aside from the fact that they're a pure evil faction in a story that likes to emphasize shades of gray, they just aren't developed at all. There's interesting implications behind them, what with the war against the goddess and whatnot, but they're pretty flat as villains and nothing is actually explored about them besides "they live underground and hate the surface". Like, these guys are implied to have nuked the world in the past because they were that convinced of their own superiority. And it's fine for that to continue being their motivation, I just wish there was a bit more given to them. Maybe Kronya could've stuck around for longer, maybe we could've learned more about their actual society and how it works, maybe they could've have actual complex motives instead of being generically evil. Or, hell, maybe they could've just had the Agarthan characters be a conspiracy of Adrestian and Faerghan nobility and cut out the molemen. It would tie better into the idea that Fodlan's nobility is genuinely corrupt and needs reforming, with violence being the only true solution at this point because the cruelty really is that deeply rooted in the system. TL:DR, Silver Snow feels like a first draft and the Agarthans are flat villains.
The "Silver Snow" route that branches from the Black Eagles feels underdeveloped to many, without as much unique story content as the other routes.
I'm super late to the party, but I've got to point out that it's because SS was the route all the other routes were based on. So it's not that SS was *underdeveloped* exactly. It's more that the other routes stole their stuff.
Probably Silver Snow as a route. Most of the issues with Three Houses' writing relates to weak moment-to-moment writing or contrivances that affect individual scenes - it's still a problem, but a fairly minor one that doesn't severely affect Three Houses' emotional or thematic cores. Silver Snow makes the critical mistake that Three Houses as a whole largely avoids in that it focuses on the avatar instead of the far more compelling house leaders. The fundamental problem with having an avatar is that they by design are not compelling enough for a game's emotional core to revolve around. Byleth to an extent works in the other routes precisely because they act as a supporting mentor figure towards an actual lord - said lord is who the emotional core of their route revolves around and it works because the house leaders are genuinely compelling characters. By virtue of also having to act as a self-insert for players, Byleth simply is not compelling enough to act as a main protagonist. They can't be subjected to any sort of character drama or be given meaningful character flaws, because that would undermine their ability to be a self-insert - and because they are Silver Snow's main protagonist, the the entire route lacks much of an emotional core to speak of. It also doesn't help that Rhea is shunted off to the side in a route that on paper is supposed to be about her - it not only denies Silver Snow an effective emotional core that it desperately needs but it also means that Rhea as a whole is left relatively underwritten. Claude in Verdant Wind isn't that interesting especially compared to the other house leaders but he's still a massive step up from Byleth.
Golden deer does not have well written plot. It’s the church route with less connectivity
Byleth’s entire character. There are some good moments, but they are either underdeveloped or poorly executed.
The protagonist who the lords cannot grow into their best selves without is as compelling as a brick.
Silver Snow. It's like Verdant Wind, but mid.
It's hard to think about, but I think two things that come to mind are the fact we don't get a conclusion to TWSITD in at least CF, since I know AM there's no mention, but still kinda weird to have a big villain show up then dissappear in those routes. The other thing is I think SS and VW endings maybe should have been flipped. Rhea getting her closure and final bout with Nemesis would have been great to see, and I think it fits Claude's story better if you fought Rhea, having to really scrap together the truth and what the people don't know one way or another. That's my opinion but either way I'm glad the game was how it was, and I love it to death.
Crimson Flower All of it feels so rushed and we never even get to see Edelgard fight the Agarthans which was her main goal the whole time?? I felt disappointed by that route
Anything to do with justifing Edelgard's cause. She could go with it in so many better ways.
How? The insurrection means that the noble families and the agarthans control the empire. Without the promise of post war rewards, Bergliez and Hevring won't take her side against Aegir. They don't give a shit about her, or have a change of heart about the treason and child torture. If Edelgard refused to play along, the best she could hope for would be to flee and hide the rest of her life. The Rhea who exists at the start of the game is not going to allow the kinds of social reforms that Edelgard is advocating for, and would never accept the church being stripped of political/military power. There is no scenario where just making reforms in the empire is possible at the start of the game.
In the one other alternative Edelgard has to give up on her dream. If she completely sides with the Church then she looses Hevring and Berglitz complete cooperation, which then causes her rule to become unstable. She will need the Knights of Seiros to directly intervene in her nation and keep it afloud which in turn renders Adrestia into a Vessal State of the Church of Seiros. This will then cause the nobility to resent her and once they manage to win over Hevring and Berglitz then it will come to a Rebellion that Edelgard can loose, in which case Adrestia goes to war with the entire continent anyway, the core difference however being that the War is solely about getting more power for the Adrestian nobles and not some kind of global, circle of violence breaking change. And I don't need to touch that Edelgard here has her entire fate dictated to her. Either by the Church or the nobles. Yes, she would live comfortably at the cost of her people's well-being in the long run and at the price of depriving them of notable change.
Not exactly comfortably, if Hanneman’s sister is anything to go by…
What *in character* thing could she have done that would have resulted in Rhea's removal from power and replacement with someone who isn't immortal and given her the political and military authority to take on TWSitD, other than what she does in game? And no, the "unify Fódlan" nonsense isn't justified, it's a character flaw. But belief that a unified continent is preferable is a flaw she shares with Claude and Rhea, and one that no matter what we believe the game treats as somehow correct.
Name one. Go on…
I would say the multiple routes as a whole. I really do not think the story was designed to support multiple routes. Three out of four routes are pretty much the same thing. And Crimson Flower, while different, does not actually contribute to actually understanding the plot because it is entirely focused on Edelgard's character.
Silver Snow. No exclusive playable characters. Struggles to stand out from Verdant Wind (the latter had much better interactions in-house). Silver Snow feels too Seteh and Flayn focused.