okay so we got this kinda fun combat right
that encounter you just went thru was kinda cool wasn't it? getting into the flow of things got a good groove going right? lol lockpick this door first idiot, fuck pacing
oh what's that the story almost seems like it's picking up? do this tailing section. do this mandatory substory we put in here just to pad out the game as well while you're at it. fuck pacing
I should also mention that the killer's reveal was lame, how a lot of the seemingly more important fights were lame, and how hard it was to care or buy into the plot itself in general, and how little opportunity it gave most of the actually likeable characters any time to shine or develop at all
this game feels so unfinished and prototypical that the whole experience just seems more like testing grounds for Lost Judgment rather than something they actually had confidence in

a fun time for the most of it but held back by being shorter than it maybe should have been, the story definitely suffers because quite a few things feel underdeveloped, (for example the worldbuilding) and certain characters and story beats end up feeling neglected especially when you look at the route differences
the gameplay is alright, there's some really good maps and a handful of bad ones (like in any fe basically), the enemy quality (and the incentive to only use your strongest units as a result) felt a little too high towards the end of the game but it never got anywhere near as bad with it as something like Awakening
I enjoyed this for what it was but it's not the deepest fire emblem experience out there by any means

in my opinion the series's best attempt at a large-scale story, it recontextualises almost everything you knew about this world coming into it from path of radiance and expands it a ton with not just new lore and crazy story beats but also good new characters and closure for those that return
when it comes to the gameplay this game is a great step-up from its predecessor, with more interesting mechanics and plenty of truly challenging maps along the way, there's a couple of bad ones but what fe game doesn't have them
another significant upgrade is the music, much of fe9's ost didn't really strike me as all that memorable but to my surprise this contains some of the most catchy and heavy-hitting tracks of the entire franchise
path of radiance of course laid most of the groundwork for this game but it uses that to its full potential, it's a great sequel with the most amount of maps in any game in the series but it's somehow almost never exhausting, and when everything clicks (and that happens quite often) this game can be pretty amazing, and as I'm writing this I feel more and more confident in calling this my favourite fire emblem game to date

massively overhated, it's no conquest obviously but the map design is still mostly nice save for a couple of stinkers, fates game mechanics do a lot of heavy lifting but it's still a fun time, getting characters from both armies is neat and opens up a lot of possibilities for interesting builds and strategies even if unit balance in this can be absolutely horrendous lol, so despite everything I enjoyed my time with this and unlike birthright this game is rarely ever boring
oh and the story is complete garbage but like, you've played the other 2 at this point, I don't see how this is unexpected

pretty fun experience overall, this game isn't as difficult as it might seem at first since many of the bullshit tools that the enemy has are also available to you if you can play your cards right, the (mostly) tight map design, more pleasant visuals and just a generally nicer game feel (the fan patch might have helped) make it clear that this game has learned a lot from its predecessor
I do however think that I prefer Genealogy's story (although this one is still nice in its own way)
a wild ride with a few missteps along the way but it's okay cuz we got a movement star to get to our destination anyways

ambitious often to a fault, is missing a lot of quality of life features present in more modern entires, can be a bit of a chore at times due to map size and the characterisation of its cast is frequently kind of lacking
that being said, the way this game makes its gameplay and story work in tandem with each other and the many other things it did to push the series forward makes me respect it a lot even if it doesn't always succeed at what it's trying to do, and I think overall the story is not half bad especially considering all the hardware limitations that made the game rely on exposition a little too much sometimes
can't disagree with people who say that this deserves a remake