I remember I was so hyped for this shit
I played this first thing when getting DE because I had already played the base game and I cannot believe I got through this
It's so fucking bad
I tried replaying the base game after this and dropped it after a while, FC just killed my vibe and made me waste 60 dollars
I fucking hate this epilogue and I hope 3's last DLC just further emphasizes this was just a cashgrab and serves no purpose in the plot whatsoever

Okay, so, a friend of mine that knows that I have a raging fetish with old men bought me this for my birthday, and I just finished it
It exacerbates my mental illness and I must say that I just speedran the dialogue cause I felt like it was too american for me to understand with all the references and big dialogues and whatnot

So I must speak (spoilers of course) about every daddy because I need to put my feelings into words

In the order I romanced them
Joseph: holy fuck he's the first I fell in love with, and his dates were like the ones that exuded romance the most out of all of them, but Jesus that ending just destroyed me
I'd still let him cuck me and use me only to cheat on his wife I don't care

Robert: I'm a sucker for "I can fix him" mfs and damn, I sexed him at the start but him crying on my shoulder was better than anything
His dates were pretty funny too but I must say I excercised my speedreading on his third date because I wasn't going to read all of that shit

Hugo: Pretty gimmicky, I guess it's pretty realistic that you do nerd things when you date a nerd and he felt pretty authentic but I don't think he really delivered

Brian: Also gimmicky, it was just fluff and I don't really like that but that last scene with him pretty much made me like him

Mat: The most boring out of them all, I must say I liked his ending and third date but he's just insufferably boring and I hate people who make music their personality so he didn't sit well with me

Craig: I don't really like him (newborn dad lmao) but I did like his relationship with the avatar, felt pretty authentic and it was nice to see him develop a little

Damien: Too feminine for me (since I'm also feminine and I don't like feminine men) but I did like his, idk how to say it, niche? of trying to be interesting when he's not, I chose him for last because he's the least attractive for me but I ended up liking him more than I thought

This game made an irreparable damage on my brain because it fed the monster that is my old man fetish so directly so I can't say anything wrong against this, I just speedread everything and ignored the cringe dialogue (pretty hard) so I guess you can say I turned off my brain to play this

"Nah, I don't think I'll play it, it didn't really hit when it was announced"

Little did this dumbfuck know he would drop everything he was playing for this game

-------22/3/2023 update----

I finished every character's storyline as of today, I have to do the true ending but as I honestly don't want to keep being tied to this game I'll do it a bit more slowly and start playing other things because I binged this hard

Now that I have played a good chunk I must say I loved this game, I don't like when games drag out too much sometimes and all I want is for them to end, but I'm nearly 90 hours in with a really big portion still left and I could go on
An absolute and really big improvement over the first game, I feel like they could make character interact even more than they do, but compared to the first game it's been really nice to see them in Travel Banter and Crossed Paths
I like every character, even Ochette when I don't like child characters (I know she's 20 but idc she's a child for me) and stories make you feel all sorts of emotions, like I was pretty happy with Agnea's when Partitio's felt pretty encouraging, I loved Cassti's and Hikari's too and the other ones were interesting too
When I couldn't bear more than 10 hours on the first game, I played nine times that the second, the only thing I didn't feel they improved was the dub but Square has really fell on that, Triangle Strategy's was awful too and I played them both in japanese

I'll update with my final impressions when I do the True Ending

Just give it a chance, it's the best thing to come out of Fire Emblem in a while

Replayed 16/4
Maddening really maddenings

Replayed 7/11
Kinda tried to explode it with mods but Cobalt isn't as reliable so yeah, I'm dumb with coding and WinMerge so I'll just wait until the modding scene modernizes more and I'll replay it again

TLDR: It's kino and you're all wrong

I'm not a big review guy, but I feel like I must speak up about this game
I will start by saying that I won't excuse the lazy game design, but not because it's bad, but because it's not innovative enough to be a sequel

The game hitting you with something so hard like the Gurdurr arc in the first two hours was the best red carpet for what was going to happen next. You building Paradise with your friends, and then just getting to know everyone important to you and seeing their lows and downs, like Virizion's insecurity and self-sheltering and Dunsparce gaining heart after spending more time with your party, Emolga purposefully sending Dunsparce to the Great Glacier when he also wanted to go to that adventure, Espeon breaking up in front of the square because of the guilt of leaving something as dangerous as the Entercards with Swadloon, the plot twist with Munna and Hydreigon, everything was so soulful and so human, I was immersed completely that I didn't even care about mashing A (even though I got around using the cheat later) to see more of the dialogue
The themes of hope, despair, the world going to shit and whatever were so powerful, there are like a million scenes where your partner stands up against all of this because everyone being bad doesn't mean you have to be, and the build up until the last chapter where everyone loses hope but gains it when they see the Rainbows, thinks of the future and how they want to change for the better was MASTERFUL, when even the team was considering just letting it all to Kyurem and die in hopes the new world was better than this one. The game handles getting people out of their insecurities and getting to trust people again so well, even I was inspired by all of this. It just hits different when every character is a thinking and emotional being that learns from their mistakes and betters themselves into a better person, like Virizion and Dunsparce

The ending is just another thing that made this game an easy 5 for me. I don't really think I have to say anything as an argument other than that Frism message, which was a powerful testament of how you built your relationships with everyone, even that one Patrat from Post Town, how you saved everyone and how everyone feels about your friendship, even saying they won't ever forget you even if the world makes them.

Sky was the last good one? I don't think this one is bad. I'm not saying I like this one over Sky which is a masterpiece all of its own, but whenever people say this flopped or whatever, it's sad to think they never played it, or that they left it halfway, or that they simply didn't read the text, because this game's story is powerful, is inspiring, is endearing, with colorful and fleshed out characters that just trascend beyond the bad inclusion of Paradise or that they didn't add anything new other than the Team Attack

I absolutely love this game, I encourage everyone to play it again and pay attention to how it builds up every moment, how it presents its characters and world and more importantly, how it all ends with you having a successful and strong bond with everyone in your party. It's disappointing how people don't see this beyond the gameplay aspect.