when this game is mid it’s mid. but when it’s good whoa mama it is INCREDIBLE.
- gameplay: i think it’s fun. it is incredibly easy to wipe the floor with your enemies because pair up is so broken. so if you’re looking for a challenge you will have to impose it on yourself. but if you want smooth sailing and broken gameplay this is your game! personally i like never used frederick back when he had jagen status and swapped out higher level units during earlier battles and only solidified an OP team during late game because i decided i was tired of skirmish grinding to make more units viable/grind supports and frankly just wanted to finish the game.
particularly my chrom-robin-lucina-morgan combo were a nuclear family both in the sense of their gender dynamics and also that throwing them at people was like dropping nukes on them.
- story: splitting this into 3 parts because this story has high highs and low lows.
part 1: the first 11 chapters are actual peak cinema. i actually don’t have much to say about this because i want people to experience it as blindly as possible. particularly if someone tries to tell you about chapter 10 you have to cover your ears and go lalalalalalala. hell i was fully spoiled on it and it still had me staring at the ceiling crying in an airbnb halfway across the country.
part 2: then you get to the timeskip where the valm arc is mid at best. it’s kind of hilarious that they decided “oh we revisited archanea let’s revisit its neighbor valentia from gaiden!” and decided the best way to do it would be… to have most of walhart’s generals be comic relief villains of the week? what does this serve? what point is there to excellus’ existence? that said when it takes itself seriously it’s pretty cool. and walhart himself as an antagonist ain’t half bad he kind of reminds me of rudolf. who is most likely his ancestor anyway so it works!
part 2.5: once the game remembers that plegia exists this is where you go back to less peak but still based fiction. while the conclusion is incredibly cliché i LOVE the power of love and friendship so i was just pogging the whole time. that said, there are some bullshit contrivances to get to this point that i’m not a fan of, and the ending scene overstayed its welcome because i had so many units… but it doesn’t knock my ranking down too much. also the scene after chapter 21 actually had me bawling because my executive decision to pair girl robin with chrom really enhanced the emotional connection.
characters: i just loooove the characters! from our main shepherds to even the randos you pick up off the street, i fell in love with… most of them? even if a good chunk of them have an obvious gimmick that permeates a lot of their dialogue like kellam going unnoticed or stahl being super average. my favorites include henry and libra and lucina.
unfortunately i burned myself out trying to get everyone in 1st gen paired up to Make Babies and in turn missed some pretty powerful support conversations. that’s what the internet is for! (alongside reading chrom and m!robin’s supports and pretending f!robin got the same level of care instead of “ohhh… shes a girl… and im a BOYYY!!! AIIIIEEEE!!” levels of melodrama.)
also mix between characters and gameplay here going to this from echoes was kind of jarring because i felt so bad benching a lot of my units but i guess echoes is the odd one out for giving you so many deployment slots?
- window-dressing: this is a very beautiful game! yusuke kozaki has worked on character design for other games i enjoy (namely AITSF) so it was nice seeing his work here. i cannot begin to explain how phenomenal the music is. this game lacks significant voice acting (just soundbytes and the occasional full line) but i kind of wish they voice acted it more because the story definitely would have benefited from it.

while i spent a lot of time complimenting the game, i would say i expected more from this game than it gave me? like it’s pretty solid but i do feel kind of let down at the same time. so it leaves me with some questions as to how this of all entries saved the series.

… but i’m so glad it did. and i can see why it has changed so many people’s lives because it definitely touched me :) given that this game is about the power of love if you read this review i want you to go tell a friend or family member that you love them.