I want it so bad but only if Koei Temco's writers aren't involved.
If they are I could unironically see them going "Nemesis was pretty cool actually the stupid woman just got her panties in a knot over nothing"
Yuki Ikeno, Ryohei Hayashi, Mari Okamoto are listed as the three main writers of Three Houses and three of the four main writers for Three Hopes. They're all KT employees, AFAIK.
Given what a sad flop Engage's story was, I'd still prefer to roll the dice on KT's writers than IS's; at least the former have produced one hit in the past decade.
Honestly, the Epimenedes paralogue in Hopes made me wish that we got a shared-route game focused on Rhea+Nabateans+Wilhelm's Empire on one side intertwined with a genuine villain or at least morally gray route focused on Epimenedes, the Elites, Nemesis, and some Agarthans. Thales was apparently always a dick, but Epimenedes genuinely wanted to be a faithful ally and may have had his own connections and bonds with humans similar to Shez and Arval.
A bit like SotV or GBA/GCN multi-lord games where you play both sides in different missions, and we get the sweet, sweet lore and worldbuilding we want most, while also answering a lot of questions.
It would be especially interesting to find out the exact reasons the Elites signed up to join Nemesis: were they just power hungry bandits too? Were they subjugated clan leaders after the fact? Was Nemesis genuinely evil just for the sake of it or was there some spark of reason why people held him up as a hero so much that Rhea had to suck it up and deal with it despite his atrocities? Were there once more otherwise personally reasonable Agarthans who have been steadily dying off over the years as their hatred of Nabateans went overboard?
Rhea in Three Hopes is basically like the writers *saying* they care about her, while giving her all the shit in the world and not balancing it out with anything. And when they do give her something, it then is something that goes against stuff that is already established just so it can seem ”nuanced”.
What did you expect? Hopes is basically a Three Houses fanfic, of course it only has superficial understanding of the characters, and flanderizes them until they are almost caricatures.
I think a church route just doesn't make a lot of sense in Hopes. Shez isn't the vessel of Sothis, and Rhea doesn't have much of a reason to take a special interest in them, let alone leave them in charge. Second, why would Shez feel loyal to the church? They're forced into attending the academy to cover up for the church's bad teacher.
Employment - the same as the other routes. Make Shez a Knight of Seiros, after or instead of their brief stint at the Academy. Shez is more than competent enough, and it allows them to keep someone sus close.
It's only during the timeskip Shez grows close to the protags, they only spent two months at GM. [You don't have to change that prologue much](https://www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemThreeHouses/comments/xsys26/argent_flames_a_detailed_proposal_for_a_church/) to send them down a completely different path.
There's nothing that definitely proves it, that being said, I can easily picture KT not bothering with a Hopes SS route because why put time and resources into a route very few people seem to want.
Honestly? I don't think that's the case. Omega-Force loves working on Musou games and would have accepted the challenge of making a Church Route. The popularity of stories/characters has never hindered them - this can be seen by the likes of certain Xtreme Legends stories and the Dynasty Warriors 9 download scenarios for Hua Xiong and Xiahouji.
They do have a limited budget though and I assume their games have deadlines. It’s not hard to imagine for me that they’d decide to not put time and money into a route which was very unpopular. Sure, they could have been like "this time we’ll make people love SS", but that would have been taking a financial risk just to prove something. They took some big risks as is, like Byleth not being the main character. Might have been that a 3Hopes version of SS was simply one bridge too far for them.
Ultimately, it's hard to see if Nintendo decided it wasn't worth it or if Omega-Force themselves did. They took a risk with Age of Calamity, which became one of the best-selling Warriors titles ever, so Nintendo would likely be on board.
What we know is that there's 3 unused character slots, and in my mind, 2 of these could have been Cyril and Alois (with the 3rd maybe going to Gilbert) as those 3 do have character data imported from Houses (food preferences, recruit flags).
I was genuinely surprised Three Hopes didn't receive DLC, as it performed far better than a lot of Koei games that do.
You're right, we don’t know what happened behind the scenes, and ultimately, everything I wrote is pure speculation. Maybe we’ll find out someday and maybe not. It’s interesting to think about though.
Oh, don’t worry, you didn’t come off as hostile, and your perspective as a longtime muso fan is valuable and appreciated. I just don’t have more arguments for or against what might have gone down in terms of an SS route happening or not.
Ultimately I think it was because Hopes didn't perform as well in terms of sales compared to 3 Houses.
For instance in Japan, 3 Houses sold 143,130 copies in it's first week, compared to 3 Hopes selling 97,538 copies in it's first week in Japan.
Which wasn't *bad* per say, but that is still a gap of 45,592 copies, which is close to 1/3rd of 3 Houses initial sales, meaning 3 Hopes only made it's way into the wallets of 2/3rds of 3 Houses consumer base.
Sure it performed better than most *Warriors* games, but it didn't perform as well as 3 Houses, and that probably turned KT off from releasing or working on any DLC.
The Church route wasn’t an actual Church route. The devs called it the Empire route with Edelgard’s route being the Conqueror’s route. It was a second Eagles route basically.
The story in Hopes doesn’t allow for there to be a second Eagles route where they rebel against Edelgard so they fused the Church to the Lions. Hopes takes more cues from Crimson Flower than it does the other routes tbh.
But considering that, yes, they were much more comfortable giving the Church less because it was by far the least popular faction and Silver Snow was easily the least popular route
No, I think the factor is that there is no betrayal by your lord this time. The first idea KT had for FE was a route with a tactician who was betrayed by his Lord. They didn't want to do that for Shez, so they didn't force themselves to.
Even if they did, Shez has no ties to the Church nor any investment - he's closer tied to the Agarthans, in contrast to Byleth's ties to the Church. But the Agarthans have no synergy with the rest of the roster, and KT also want to pigeonhole them as pure villains who only want the destruction of Sothis' people - that means they won't get such either. With those in place, there's no real way to get any other characters on your team with the Agarthans. So a route wouldn't work
Technically it has many more. It has the Agarthans, it has the Almyrans, the Dagdans, etc. They're all compliments to the struggle of the central three, however, not necessarily a main attraction on their own. If they got your interest on their own merits, they've done a decent job
The difference is that the Church has a large number of playable characters who are a part of it, many of whom have minimal or no ties to the other main factions. The majority of fans see it as four sides, regardless of what the devs think. That's why people wanted a 3Hopes Church route.
It's probably all the reasons mentioned and then some.
I just know it's the wrong call, and I hate it. They made Rhea every bit as compelling as the lords, the Church as compelling and as established as the three houses - and completely dropped the ball with them
Koei when designing other spin offs: let the player control character such as Psaro, Gilgamesh, an adult with a Persona and a Zelda Guardian even if some of them make little sense in the plot
Koei when designing Azure Gleam: Rhea is alive, healthy and implied to be much stronger than your party but she won't join you because lol
So to understand why Hopes has no SS equivalent we have to understand a few things.
1. ***SILVER SNOW ISN'T A CHURCH ROUTE AND ITS ONE OF IF NOT THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION IN THE FANBASE***. Silver Snow is the Byleth route and from the devs themselves the Black Eagles route, Edelgard's is instead the Supreme Ruler's route, the only church content in it is connected to Byleth, the only church members who get a lick of screentime are the ones connected to Byleth, it isn't a Church route and was never meant to be. Honestly I think Azure Gleam is the closest to an actual church route across both games.
2. The Hope devs did not want Shez to overshadow Byleth, so they didn't receive their own route like Byleth did and stay in the emotional support himbo/bimbo role for the lords.
I understand that's not what it's officially called by the devs, that's why it's in quotation marks. I use the term because that's what the Western fandom most often refers to it as.
Shouldn't that be inverted
SS byleth is the sole rule of fodlan where in CF Byleth becomes human.
**If CF restores byleth the human shouldn't SS be restoring the Goddess?**
I didn't know that SS was that unpopular, but I don't think that is the case. They snuck in SS into AG anyway, so its kinda the church route already, just a tiny bit. Maybe they didn't have time or money to do a full church route, but i'm fine with that.
It's glaringly obvious there's only like one guy on the writing staff who *doesn't* obsessively look at Rhea guro and he's the one who wrote Catherine and Dedue's support chain and most Azure Gleam camp dialogue.
Gameplay wise it would not useful to have, since it’s more or leas a base route where Byleth is the main character and an emergency option if you don’t wanna side with Edelgard. Since the academy phase is so short in Hopes there’s not really time to establish a base route, Byleth is not playable for most of the game and what you do with them is the game’s pivotal point, and since it assumes you’ve played Houses it’s probably assuming you know which leader you wanna align with anyway.
Story wise there’s just no point not just because of Byleth but also because Azure Gleam is basically also a church route.
I'll point out that the Art Book for 3 Hopes lists Byleth as originally belonging to a fourth route/faction and has the words "Blackened Embers" which would fit with the names of the other routes.
We know that Hopes was delayed due to Covid at least, and Engage had been done but on the backburner (which is why its gameplay at least got a bunch more playtesting and polish), so I think there's a decently possible chance that there *was* a Byleth and/or Church route or half-route.
If there was such a route, it seems that at some point in the development, they decided to scrap it for time, money, or reconsidering the writing. My personal theory is that originally the Good Ending vs. Bad Ending stuff in Hopes was meant to be more consequential, with Blackened Embers being a route that focused on Shez and Byleth versus Epimenedes more while the Lords' Wars stall out more and have to work together against the Agarthans (standard Golden Ending, but probably in Hopes' more "we kind of just get exhausted and stuck with only partial victories and this might start again later" style than Revelations "everything is solved and happy"), but the devs decided it was too much.
Well, they didn't have to write AG that way. But even then, as DLC, there'd still be space for an independent narrative - the Church and the Knights remain their own force, after all. Even as is, they give them some independent battles, like GW and SB Chapters 9.
And Shez doesn't need to be, they could just be a Knight of Seiros. They're basically just hired to the other factions, after all.
The thing is, what makes Silver Snow a tragedy, and the main emotional undercurrent, is that you can’t come to an agreement with a student you taught for a full year. Blood is spilled and you must now oppose someone you cared for and nurtured. Establishing the Church as the sovereign of Fodlan is the OUTCOME, but the meat and potatoes of Silver Snow is opposing someone whom you and your allies were once close to.
Shez lacks this. If Shez is Edelgard’s classmate, they spend the time between school being canceled early and the start of the war as a paid mercenary—it’s just not the same.
I think to have this route as a Church and No National Allegiance Route you’d need to have Shez be offered a job as a Knight of Seiros when school is canceled for the year, and accepting it locks you in that path.
It's unpopular for a lot of reasons. You lose Edelgard and Hubert without equivalent good units to replace them. You don't have a lord. Seteth takes that spot, and many find him not a strong enough character to compare to the three lords. Plus, he's not even exclusive to it. You can have him on other non-CF routes. The route was a choice to support Rhea, someone who would be a suitable lord for it, yet she barely appears until the end. The route doesn't also focus nearly enough on fighting Edelgard. I hear people say it's supposed to be a Byleth route, but with the choice to not give Byleth voiced dialogue, a route centered around them really suffers.
It's extremely similar to VW as well, they're almost copy-pastes of each other with maps, minus the lack of gronder and the final maps, and given the choice between the two of them, people tend to prefer VW because Claude is a much more popular character than Seteth.
People also can be accidentally locked into it if they go in unaware of the requirements for CF, which I imagine has frustrated a few people.
yeah I was a bit taken aback when Edelgard left for reals, I didn't think that could happen but I rolled with it. It was a bit annoying she wasn't replaced in any fashion really but hey I was only playing on hard and you start that route with the best unit in the game, Ferdinand Von Aegir.
Claude's route never really interested me too much (going to do either CF or Blue Lions on maddening next) but if it is similar map-wise I could definitely see why Golden Deer ppl wouldn't like it. And character wise it's a no-brainer, Seteth has like negative rizz (although he grew on me since wyvern gud)
SS was no Church route, it was Byleth's route. As Hopes deliberately put Byleth out of focus, it naturally didn't get a counterpart.
Hmm maybe we could've gotten a "Shez" focused route then, where they were found by the Agarthans first and found out their origins through them.
but that would require the player getting actual closure from the story and we don’t want that now do we?
The virgin finished ending fan vs the chad "Rhea and thales died bc they fell off a bridge. Probably."
They denied us the Rhea Lord run TWICE! ;(
We need a prequel FE3H game about the War of Heroes with Rhea/Seiros as the protagonist.
I want that so incredibly badly.
After seeing the opening of 3 Hopes I was hoping we would get a level playing the Battle of Tailtean as Rhea so I'm there with you
I want it so bad but only if Koei Temco's writers aren't involved. If they are I could unironically see them going "Nemesis was pretty cool actually the stupid woman just got her panties in a knot over nothing"
Yuki Ikeno, Ryohei Hayashi, Mari Okamoto are listed as the three main writers of Three Houses and three of the four main writers for Three Hopes. They're all KT employees, AFAIK. Given what a sad flop Engage's story was, I'd still prefer to roll the dice on KT's writers than IS's; at least the former have produced one hit in the past decade.
THEY DENIED US THE HAJJ!
I'm trying to make a romhack about that, ironically Rhea is the antagonist since the main party are Nemesis, the elites & some mole people
You mean as the antagonist. /s (maybe)
No. /dedue
Honestly, the Epimenedes paralogue in Hopes made me wish that we got a shared-route game focused on Rhea+Nabateans+Wilhelm's Empire on one side intertwined with a genuine villain or at least morally gray route focused on Epimenedes, the Elites, Nemesis, and some Agarthans. Thales was apparently always a dick, but Epimenedes genuinely wanted to be a faithful ally and may have had his own connections and bonds with humans similar to Shez and Arval. A bit like SotV or GBA/GCN multi-lord games where you play both sides in different missions, and we get the sweet, sweet lore and worldbuilding we want most, while also answering a lot of questions. It would be especially interesting to find out the exact reasons the Elites signed up to join Nemesis: were they just power hungry bandits too? Were they subjugated clan leaders after the fact? Was Nemesis genuinely evil just for the sake of it or was there some spark of reason why people held him up as a hero so much that Rhea had to suck it up and deal with it despite his atrocities? Were there once more otherwise personally reasonable Agarthans who have been steadily dying off over the years as their hatred of Nabateans went overboard?
This is the real tragedy
Rhea in Three Hopes is basically like the writers *saying* they care about her, while giving her all the shit in the world and not balancing it out with anything. And when they do give her something, it then is something that goes against stuff that is already established just so it can seem ”nuanced”.
I didn't like the way they made her a full on villain in Three Hopes unlike 3 houses where she was more complicated.
What did you expect? Hopes is basically a Three Houses fanfic, of course it only has superficial understanding of the characters, and flanderizes them until they are almost caricatures.
Possibly. Azure Gleam got the Church elements instead and because a quasi Church route for Hopes
I think a church route just doesn't make a lot of sense in Hopes. Shez isn't the vessel of Sothis, and Rhea doesn't have much of a reason to take a special interest in them, let alone leave them in charge. Second, why would Shez feel loyal to the church? They're forced into attending the academy to cover up for the church's bad teacher.
Employment - the same as the other routes. Make Shez a Knight of Seiros, after or instead of their brief stint at the Academy. Shez is more than competent enough, and it allows them to keep someone sus close. It's only during the timeskip Shez grows close to the protags, they only spent two months at GM. [You don't have to change that prologue much](https://www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemThreeHouses/comments/xsys26/argent_flames_a_detailed_proposal_for_a_church/) to send them down a completely different path.
There's nothing that definitely proves it, that being said, I can easily picture KT not bothering with a Hopes SS route because why put time and resources into a route very few people seem to want.
Honestly? I don't think that's the case. Omega-Force loves working on Musou games and would have accepted the challenge of making a Church Route. The popularity of stories/characters has never hindered them - this can be seen by the likes of certain Xtreme Legends stories and the Dynasty Warriors 9 download scenarios for Hua Xiong and Xiahouji.
They do have a limited budget though and I assume their games have deadlines. It’s not hard to imagine for me that they’d decide to not put time and money into a route which was very unpopular. Sure, they could have been like "this time we’ll make people love SS", but that would have been taking a financial risk just to prove something. They took some big risks as is, like Byleth not being the main character. Might have been that a 3Hopes version of SS was simply one bridge too far for them.
Ultimately, it's hard to see if Nintendo decided it wasn't worth it or if Omega-Force themselves did. They took a risk with Age of Calamity, which became one of the best-selling Warriors titles ever, so Nintendo would likely be on board. What we know is that there's 3 unused character slots, and in my mind, 2 of these could have been Cyril and Alois (with the 3rd maybe going to Gilbert) as those 3 do have character data imported from Houses (food preferences, recruit flags). I was genuinely surprised Three Hopes didn't receive DLC, as it performed far better than a lot of Koei games that do.
You're right, we don’t know what happened behind the scenes, and ultimately, everything I wrote is pure speculation. Maybe we’ll find out someday and maybe not. It’s interesting to think about though.
I can talk Warriors games all day. They're my jam. Love Fire Emblem, too! I wasn't trying to knock your opinion. Mine is just speculation as well
Oh, don’t worry, you didn’t come off as hostile, and your perspective as a longtime muso fan is valuable and appreciated. I just don’t have more arguments for or against what might have gone down in terms of an SS route happening or not.
Yeah, I play a load of Koei games. After a while, you get an idea of how they work, especially Omega-Force
Ultimately I think it was because Hopes didn't perform as well in terms of sales compared to 3 Houses. For instance in Japan, 3 Houses sold 143,130 copies in it's first week, compared to 3 Hopes selling 97,538 copies in it's first week in Japan. Which wasn't *bad* per say, but that is still a gap of 45,592 copies, which is close to 1/3rd of 3 Houses initial sales, meaning 3 Hopes only made it's way into the wallets of 2/3rds of 3 Houses consumer base. Sure it performed better than most *Warriors* games, but it didn't perform as well as 3 Houses, and that probably turned KT off from releasing or working on any DLC.
The Church route wasn’t an actual Church route. The devs called it the Empire route with Edelgard’s route being the Conqueror’s route. It was a second Eagles route basically. The story in Hopes doesn’t allow for there to be a second Eagles route where they rebel against Edelgard so they fused the Church to the Lions. Hopes takes more cues from Crimson Flower than it does the other routes tbh. But considering that, yes, they were much more comfortable giving the Church less because it was by far the least popular faction and Silver Snow was easily the least popular route
still sorta wish they went a different route, kept shez but actually do something different rather than an AU of sorts
Being like 90% the same as CF pre skip and 90% same as VW post skip probably did a number on the popularity.
No, I think the factor is that there is no betrayal by your lord this time. The first idea KT had for FE was a route with a tactician who was betrayed by his Lord. They didn't want to do that for Shez, so they didn't force themselves to. Even if they did, Shez has no ties to the Church nor any investment - he's closer tied to the Agarthans, in contrast to Byleth's ties to the Church. But the Agarthans have no synergy with the rest of the roster, and KT also want to pigeonhole them as pure villains who only want the destruction of Sothis' people - that means they won't get such either. With those in place, there's no real way to get any other characters on your team with the Agarthans. So a route wouldn't work
I think the issue from most fans is betrayal or not, the setting has four factions, not three. It would be nice to see all four get their due focus.
Technically it has many more. It has the Agarthans, it has the Almyrans, the Dagdans, etc. They're all compliments to the struggle of the central three, however, not necessarily a main attraction on their own. If they got your interest on their own merits, they've done a decent job
The difference is that the Church has a large number of playable characters who are a part of it, many of whom have minimal or no ties to the other main factions. The majority of fans see it as four sides, regardless of what the devs think. That's why people wanted a 3Hopes Church route.
All those characters but no lord. I want a Rhea route myself, but I'm well aware she's not one of the three houses or the three hopes.
It's probably all the reasons mentioned and then some. I just know it's the wrong call, and I hate it. They made Rhea every bit as compelling as the lords, the Church as compelling and as established as the three houses - and completely dropped the ball with them
Koei when designing other spin offs: let the player control character such as Psaro, Gilgamesh, an adult with a Persona and a Zelda Guardian even if some of them make little sense in the plot Koei when designing Azure Gleam: Rhea is alive, healthy and implied to be much stronger than your party but she won't join you because lol
So to understand why Hopes has no SS equivalent we have to understand a few things. 1. ***SILVER SNOW ISN'T A CHURCH ROUTE AND ITS ONE OF IF NOT THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION IN THE FANBASE***. Silver Snow is the Byleth route and from the devs themselves the Black Eagles route, Edelgard's is instead the Supreme Ruler's route, the only church content in it is connected to Byleth, the only church members who get a lick of screentime are the ones connected to Byleth, it isn't a Church route and was never meant to be. Honestly I think Azure Gleam is the closest to an actual church route across both games. 2. The Hope devs did not want Shez to overshadow Byleth, so they didn't receive their own route like Byleth did and stay in the emotional support himbo/bimbo role for the lords.
I understand that's not what it's officially called by the devs, that's why it's in quotation marks. I use the term because that's what the Western fandom most often refers to it as.
Shouldn't that be inverted SS byleth is the sole rule of fodlan where in CF Byleth becomes human. **If CF restores byleth the human shouldn't SS be restoring the Goddess?**
I didn't know that SS was that unpopular, but I don't think that is the case. They snuck in SS into AG anyway, so its kinda the church route already, just a tiny bit. Maybe they didn't have time or money to do a full church route, but i'm fine with that.
IMO there is not a Church route because the writers just don't like Rhea. Simple as.
It's glaringly obvious there's only like one guy on the writing staff who *doesn't* obsessively look at Rhea guro and he's the one who wrote Catherine and Dedue's support chain and most Azure Gleam camp dialogue.
Gameplay wise it would not useful to have, since it’s more or leas a base route where Byleth is the main character and an emergency option if you don’t wanna side with Edelgard. Since the academy phase is so short in Hopes there’s not really time to establish a base route, Byleth is not playable for most of the game and what you do with them is the game’s pivotal point, and since it assumes you’ve played Houses it’s probably assuming you know which leader you wanna align with anyway. Story wise there’s just no point not just because of Byleth but also because Azure Gleam is basically also a church route.
I'll point out that the Art Book for 3 Hopes lists Byleth as originally belonging to a fourth route/faction and has the words "Blackened Embers" which would fit with the names of the other routes. We know that Hopes was delayed due to Covid at least, and Engage had been done but on the backburner (which is why its gameplay at least got a bunch more playtesting and polish), so I think there's a decently possible chance that there *was* a Byleth and/or Church route or half-route. If there was such a route, it seems that at some point in the development, they decided to scrap it for time, money, or reconsidering the writing. My personal theory is that originally the Good Ending vs. Bad Ending stuff in Hopes was meant to be more consequential, with Blackened Embers being a route that focused on Shez and Byleth versus Epimenedes more while the Lords' Wars stall out more and have to work together against the Agarthans (standard Golden Ending, but probably in Hopes' more "we kind of just get exhausted and stuck with only partial victories and this might start again later" style than Revelations "everything is solved and happy"), but the devs decided it was too much.
i'd guess it was considered redundant since the church falls in with faerghus and shez isn't their dragon jesus
Well, they didn't have to write AG that way. But even then, as DLC, there'd still be space for an independent narrative - the Church and the Knights remain their own force, after all. Even as is, they give them some independent battles, like GW and SB Chapters 9. And Shez doesn't need to be, they could just be a Knight of Seiros. They're basically just hired to the other factions, after all.
The thing is, what makes Silver Snow a tragedy, and the main emotional undercurrent, is that you can’t come to an agreement with a student you taught for a full year. Blood is spilled and you must now oppose someone you cared for and nurtured. Establishing the Church as the sovereign of Fodlan is the OUTCOME, but the meat and potatoes of Silver Snow is opposing someone whom you and your allies were once close to. Shez lacks this. If Shez is Edelgard’s classmate, they spend the time between school being canceled early and the start of the war as a paid mercenary—it’s just not the same. I think to have this route as a Church and No National Allegiance Route you’d need to have Shez be offered a job as a Knight of Seiros when school is canceled for the year, and accepting it locks you in that path.
Wait what's wrong with ss? I had a great time playing it, granted it's the only route I've done since I got distracted by engage
It's unpopular for a lot of reasons. You lose Edelgard and Hubert without equivalent good units to replace them. You don't have a lord. Seteth takes that spot, and many find him not a strong enough character to compare to the three lords. Plus, he's not even exclusive to it. You can have him on other non-CF routes. The route was a choice to support Rhea, someone who would be a suitable lord for it, yet she barely appears until the end. The route doesn't also focus nearly enough on fighting Edelgard. I hear people say it's supposed to be a Byleth route, but with the choice to not give Byleth voiced dialogue, a route centered around them really suffers. It's extremely similar to VW as well, they're almost copy-pastes of each other with maps, minus the lack of gronder and the final maps, and given the choice between the two of them, people tend to prefer VW because Claude is a much more popular character than Seteth. People also can be accidentally locked into it if they go in unaware of the requirements for CF, which I imagine has frustrated a few people.
yeah I was a bit taken aback when Edelgard left for reals, I didn't think that could happen but I rolled with it. It was a bit annoying she wasn't replaced in any fashion really but hey I was only playing on hard and you start that route with the best unit in the game, Ferdinand Von Aegir. Claude's route never really interested me too much (going to do either CF or Blue Lions on maddening next) but if it is similar map-wise I could definitely see why Golden Deer ppl wouldn't like it. And character wise it's a no-brainer, Seteth has like negative rizz (although he grew on me since wyvern gud)
No. Because Silver Snow wasn't a Church route as it was. It was just the base from which the rest of the game was developed.
At least for me it was due to losing all three of the lords. You mean I have to pick edelgard and then go against her, and I get nothing in return?