Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

[Zevox]

The inevitable has finally happened: we have a Fire Emblem Warriors sequel specifically for Three Houses. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. Coming June 24th.

Some interesting things from the trailer:
- Female Byleth appears to be the default version. Not only is she the only one we see in the trailer, she's on the (presumable) cover art shown at the end. Presumably male Byleth will be available for those who want to play him though, just like female Robin and male Corrin in the first Fire Emblem Warriors.
- It's not entirely clear where in the game's timeline this will fit, or if it's in continuity with the main stories at all. From context clues I'd guess it to be occurring during the time-skip, but Byleth is involved as well, and obviously that doesn't line up with any version of the existing story. Maybe they fit it in somehow, or maybe it's in its own continuity, a fifth timeline separate from the known four.
- We see an unknown character attacking Byleth, and some dialogue from Sothis implying this guy may be after revenge for something. Interestingly, on the cover art, he has some white-clad kid in the background behind him, posed to mirror Sothis. This raises all kinds of questions.

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Could he be another "god" like Sothis? Will we perhaps get a better idea of just how godly Sothis was in this? More information about the Children of the Goddess in general? What is this guy's connection to Sothis and Byleth?

- Obviously, Byleth and the three house leaders are playable, but it's unclear who else will be as yet. Hubert can be seen in one scene alongside Edelgard, and honestly it'd be surprising if he weren't playable, being all but joined at the hip to her (same for Dedue with Dimitri, although he doesn't appear in the trailer). We catch glimpses of Judith and Randolph during the trailer, but as only enemies - and it'd honestly be surprising to see them prioritized as playable over the playable characters from the original game, since they're fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Jeralt is also shown very briefly in a cutscene, but that could easily be a flashback, not anything implying a significant role or playability. There's also brief cutscene glimpses of the Immaculate One and a red-haired woman (Monica?). But yeah, speculation for the roster is pretty wide open right now.

I am most certainly looking forward to this . Anybody else?

[GloatingSwine]

Let's hope it's not Oops! all move clones! like the last one.

[LaZodiac]

I genuinely feel like given the tighter cast, every single character could be playable if they wanted to get the full Dynasty Warriors "buncha dudes to play" aesthetic.

My personal hopes for this is that THIS is the "True, Everyone Gets To Live" ending that Three Houses didn't have itself.

[Zevox]

Let's hope it's not Oops! all move clones! like the last one.

That's an exaggeration, but yeah, we could certainly do without any copy/pasted movesets this time. I do think that 3 Houses' expanded class system and each character having different predispositions might help with that. We could get Lindhart as a Bishop, Mercedes as a Gremory, and Marianne as a Holy Knight, rather than all three as "healer with some light magic," for instance.

I genuinely feel like given the tighter cast, every single character could be playable if they wanted to get the full Dynasty Warriors "buncha dudes to play" aesthetic.

That'd be ambitious. The first Fire Emblem Warriors had 23 playable characters (ignoring the gender-swapped variants of Robin and Corrin), but with 8 of those having cloned movesets, so only 15 movesets. Three Houses had Byleth, eight characters per house, plus another 9 from the Church/Knights, for a total of 34. And that's before you look at the DLC additions of the Ashen Wolves, Anna, and Jeritza, who would bring the total to 40.

Plus, I suspect we'll see at least one playable character who wasn't playable in Three Houses: Rhea. Just a guess on my part, but I think she's important enough that they'll do it.

My personal hopes for this is that THIS is the "True, Everyone Gets To Live" ending that Three Houses didn't have itself.

Oh I hope not. Lack of anything like that is kind of central to Three Houses' story, I wouldn't want them to do that, even in a non-canon spin-off. I hope it's a side-story that can coexist with the story as-is, whether or not it's canon, and gives us some new information to chew on about parts of the lore or history that were still left vague. (Though it shouldn't clear up all mysteries, since that runs the risk of putting one side of the conflict clearly in the right.)

[LaZodiac]

You're 100% right, but I still feel that draw to be like "I want a perfect happy ending ;_;"

But then, the excellence OF Three Houses, as it is now, is why I DO want that. So yeah.

[oogaboogagoblin]

tbh ive lost all faith in the warriors franchise its always the same game with slightly different characters and plot, its just fanservice for the people that want to see their favorite characters again and the games are always pretty low effort. thats just my opinion tho

[Dragonus45]

The Warriors games tend to be at their best when they are making games for other peoples properties, hopefully this has less grindy between mission stuff like teaching and running in circles trying to gift people things, and I get a whole new game to stab Edelgard in, so I'm looking forward to it. The Nintendo Direct mentioned something along the lines of "...a new story in the world of Three Houses" so this will be a new timeline or likely several new ones splitting off from alternatives of what might have happened if Byleth was around during the time skip? Perhaps we will get to see a more involved Those Who Slither in the Dark and get more explanations about what their deal is?

[MCerberus]

I worry that this game may be too... Japan for me. The last Fire Emblem being half a high-school anime was almost there, but since it's a Warriors game we're going to have a lot of 'shining finger' moments.

Or maybe they need to embrace it and shoot the moon. Spend absolutely no effort translating anything but the cutscenes and revel in the anime tropes.

[GloatingSwine]

That's an exaggeration, but yeah, we could certainly do without any copy/pasted movesets this time.

Not really. Especially because more than half of the DLC characters were move clones as well. (Niles, Tharja, Minverva, Navarre & Owain at least)

Compare FEW with Hyrule Warriors which had way more unique movesets given that it had multiple entirely unique weapons per character with different moves on each one (and by the end of its lifecycle my god are there loads of different ones).

They really need to put some work in this time to make, eg. different bow users feel more different (because there were four with the exact same moves), different pegasus knights (three with the same moves) etc.

Different classes won't mean anything if they don't have different rhythms of play and animation sets.

[Maryring]

If they are gonna keep moveset clones, I hope that at least they make the movesets class based, so you can have Caspar play as both a grappler and a warrior for example. So you can play your favourite character without being stuck with a particular moveset you may not enjoy playing.

But personally, I'm excited. I like the warriors gameplay. It's the perfect light snack if I don't want to play a game requiring effort.

[Zevox]

The Nintendo Direct mentioned something along the lines of "...a new story in the world of Three Houses" so this will be a new timeline or likely several new ones splitting off from alternatives of what might have happened if Byleth was around during the time skip? Perhaps we will get to see a more involved Those Who Slither in the Dark and get more explanations about what their deal is?

I think that's a jump. "A new story in the same world" just means it's not a retelling of the existing story, which doesn't really tell us anything about how it fits into things. And we got a good idea of what the Agarthians' deal was between the various routes, at least from the perspective of the few among their enemies who knew anything about them. What we could use perhaps is a better idea of how they think of themselves beyond just Solon and Thalias' occasional ramblings - or better, their side of the story of what happened way back in ancient history, before they were forced underground - but I don't know if we should expect that.

Not really. Especially because more than half of the DLC characters were move clones as well. (Niles, Tharja, Minverva, Navarre & Owain at least)

Compare FEW with Hyrule Warriors which had way more unique movesets given that it had multiple entirely unique weapons per character with different moves on each one (and by the end of its lifecycle my god are there loads of different ones).

They really need to put some work in this time to make, eg. different bow users feel more different (because there were four with the exact same moves), different pegasus knights (three with the same moves) etc.

Different classes won't mean anything if they don't have different rhythms of play and animation sets.

I can't speak to the DLC, since I never bought any. And I don't disagree that there were entirely too many duplicated movesets, and yes, I too make that comparison to Hyrule Warriors and am disappointed by it. I was saying that the "Oops, all clones!" comment was an exaggeration because the majority of the characters still had unique movesets, it was only about a third of the cast that got stuck with cloned ones.

And I brought up the different classes because if any thought is put into it, those three examples I gave should obviously work differently. A Bishop is entirely focused on faith casting, so it would do light magic and some healing; a Gremory combines reason and faith magic, so it would mix elemental and light magic; and a Holy Knight is a mounted holy caster that also uses lances, so there should be no danger of them cloning that one from another caster class. Contrast to, say, the archer classes, where it's easier for them to get lazy because there's not much variation given in the source material - Bow Knight is the only one that stands out, due to being mounted. (And Claude's unique Wyvern-mounted archer classes, of course.)

If they are gonna keep moveset clones, I hope that at least they make the movesets class based, so you can have Caspar play as both a grappler and a warrior for example. So you can play your favourite character without being stuck with a particular moveset you may not enjoy playing.

But personally, I'm excited. I like the warriors gameplay. It's the perfect light snack if I don't want to play a game requiring effort.

That's one way to do it I suppose, though I'd definitely prefer unique movesets. Let Caspar mix axe strikes and fisticuffs in the same moveset, since those are the weapon types he's inclined towards. Hell, Three Houses lets you use any weapon regardless of class, so there's not even an argument to be made that this wouldn't be faithful to the source material, unlike in past games.

[GloatingSwine]

And I brought up the different classes because if any thought is put into it, those three examples I gave should obviously work differently. A Bishop is entirely focused on faith casting, so it would do light magic and some healing; a Gremory combines reason and faith magic, so it would mix elemental and light magic; and a Holy Knight is a mounted holy caster that also uses lances, so there should be no danger of them cloning that one from another caster class. Contrast to, say, the archer classes, where it's easier for them to get lazy because there's not much variation given in the source material - Bow Knight is the only one that stands out, due to being mounted. (And Claude's unique Wyvern-mounted archer classes, of course.)

Right, but if light magic and elemental magic are just different colours of the same moves with the same rhythm of action to their combos, they won't be different. (See: Leo and Elise. Dark Knight and Troubador respectively but move cloned in Warriors).

Making characters different in a Warriors game is about varying the shape and rhythm of attacks above all. (And it's not like they felt the need to stick to characters' classes either. Lissa and Sakura are both clerics but here they've gone with just War Cleric for Lissa and that's all axe all the time with no magic and Sakura's just a bow user, IIRC they just started with a staff for area healing instead of a vulnerary for self healing to represent being a cleric.)

If they put effort into it they could make a good spread of students from across all the houses and make them all feel unique, but "If" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

[Rodin]

I haven't played one of the Warriors games since the PS2 era, so I gotta ask...is the gameplay the same? I remember it being a sort of single-player MOBA that wound up feeling frustrating after a while because you could only be in one place at once.

I'm assuming they've improved things since then as it's been 20 years, but I have no idea what to expect. Are you just running around slaughtering stuff, or is there a bunch of micromanagement and abandoning a push because any time you leave a section of the battlefield alone it will get overrun? Do you jump between characters or are you just playing a singular dude?

And finally, do the games have a decent story attached? I remember Dynasty Warriors 2 being a bunch of set pieces that were largely incomprehensible unless you were well versed in Three Kingdoms era history.

[Zevox]

Right, but if light magic and elemental magic are just different colours of the same moves with the same rhythm of action to their combos, they won't be different. (See: Leo and Elise. Dark Knight and Troubador respectively but move cloned in Warriors).

Right, but you're missing that Valkyrie and Dark Knight actually do the same offensive spells in Fates. They're both anima/elemental casters, because that's all the Conquest characters get. In Three Houses, you have actual light magic attacks associated with faith type magic for them to draw on - Nosferatu, Seraphim, Aura, etc. Again, harder for them to get lazy and just clone things when the source material makes the classes work differently.

For that matter, the fact that each character gets different spells in Three Houses (aside from the universal Heal and Nosferatu at the lowest Faith levels) should help the casters out in particular as well. We're more likely to see Dorothea using fire and lightning while Annette is more about throwing around wind magic since that's actually what they do individually in the original game, rather than everyone just using whatever tomes you hand them from the same universal list. Even Hubert and Lysithea, the two dark magic users, only overlap in two of their five reason spells.

(And it's not like they felt the need to stick to characters' classes either. Lissa and Sakura are both clerics but here they've gone with just War Cleric for Lissa and that's all axe all the time with no magic and Sakura's just a bow user, IIRC they just started with a staff for area healing instead of a vulnerary for self healing to represent being a cleric.)

That's a problem of how healers worked in those games. In the base class, they just use staffs, so they don't attack at all; in master classes, they pick up a weapon or magic as well. I don't know why they went with those, but at least Lissa got a unique moveset out of it, instead of potentially being cloned from Robin if they'd gone with Sage instead. And Sakura's in the sad position in Fates of only being able to pick two classes that get physical weapons for her master class - either Priestess for bows (which they obviously went with in Warriors), or Great Master for spears.

If they put effort into it they could make a good spread of students from across all the houses and make them all feel unique, but "If" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Agreed. I simply feel that the way Three Houses changed the mechanics of the class system should lend itself to them more easily doing diverse movesets. Hopefully they actually take that opportunity rather than being lazy about it.

I haven't played one of the Warriors games since the PS2 era, so I gotta ask...is the gameplay the same? I remember it being a sort of single-player MOBA that wound up feeling frustrating after a while because you could only be in one place at once.

I'm assuming they've improved things since then as it's been 20 years, but I have no idea what to expect. Are you just running around slaughtering stuff, or is there a bunch of micromanagement and abandoning a push because any time you leave a section of the battlefield alone it will get overrun? Do you jump between characters or are you just playing a singular dude?

And finally, do the games have a decent story attached? I remember Dynasty Warriors 2 being a bunch of set pieces that were largely incomprehensible unless you were well versed in Three Kingdoms era history.

I've not played any of the actual Dynasty Warriors games, just the more recent spin-offs; nor have I played a MOBA to comment on that comparison. In general though, you're slaughtering hundreds of minor enemies that present no real threat, while occasionally running into enemy leaders that do and take more effort to take down. Depending on the individual stage you might need to hurry to certain areas to stop an attack, sure. You control one character at a time, but can switch between the characters that you deployed for the stage on the fly (usually 3-5 per stage, IIRC).

As far as story, well, Hyrule Warriors and the first Fire Emblem Warriors didn't really have much. Since they were crossover games with a bunch of characters that wouldn't normally interact there was some flimsy justification for that, an obviously evil big bad to deal with, and that was about it. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which is probably the best parallel we'll get to Three Hopes since it was a prequel to a single specific game (Breath of the Wild, of course), did have a more focused story with more meat to it, though at the end of the day it's still just a fairly typical Legend of Zelda story. For Three Hopes, I'm at least hoping we'll get better than that, given what it's based on, but I'd say it's up in the air how well it turns out.

[Dragonus45]

I think that's a jump. "A new story in the same world" just means it's not a retelling of the existing story, which doesn't really tell us anything about how it fits into things. And we got a good idea of what the Agarthians' deal was between the various routes, at least from the perspective of the few among their enemies who knew anything about them. What we could use perhaps is a better idea of how they think of themselves beyond just Solon and Thalias' occasional ramblings - or better, their side of the story of what happened way back in ancient history, before they were forced underground - but I don't know if we should expect that.

"A new story in the same world" sounds exactly like new routes outside of just the ones in the game, and I don't it it is unlikely at all to get an inside view of the Agarthians since they could get great value out of having them as characters with a route of their own.

[GloatingSwine]

Agreed. I simply feel that the way Three Houses changed the mechanics of the class system should lend itself to them more easily doing diverse movesets. Hopefully they actually take that opportunity rather than being lazy about it.

But there's the thing though.

How diverse the movesets are is absolutely nothing to do with the Fire Emblem classes really, and everything to do with how imaginative Omega Force are feeling and how much they want to spend on animation. They could have made more than one bow moveset, they could have made more than one pegasus moveset, they could have made staff attacks, they just didn't.

They could absolutely turn all the casters into simple recolours and would if they thought they could get away with it (because when they phone it in they really phone it in, see: DW9)

[Mechalich]

But there's the thing though.

How diverse the movesets are is absolutely nothing to do with the Fire Emblem classes really, and everything to do with how imaginative Omega Force are feeling and how much they want to spend on animation. They could have made more than one bow moveset, they could have made more than one pegasus moveset, they could have made staff attacks, they just didn't.

They could absolutely turn all the casters into simple recolours and would if they thought they could get away with it (because when they phone it in they really phone it in, see: DW9)

DW9 wasn't really a case of phoning it in, it was a case of trying to change the core gameplay formula and failing massively. There's actually a lot of stuff in DW9, it just...sucks. But they do phone in the production values on the derivative games when they assume the overall market will be small. Out of all the derivative IPs that have currently been chosen for Warriors titles, Fire Emblem might be the one with the smallest market, so it's the obvious place to cut corners.

It also depends on where a game falls in Omega Force's endless cycle of engine modifications. Games that are designed to squeeze the last drop out of existing tech are the ones that include the most stuff - often because it can be more or less directly copied over from previously games, especially in the case of the Warriors Orochi titles - while games that use new tech have reduced numbers of characters and other bells and whistles.

Three Hopes will presumably use the digital engine and setup produced for SW5. In that game (which IMO is a very solid entry in the series though the materials grinding is annoying) moveset is tied to weapon, not character, though each character gets unique special moves.

[Zevox]

New trailer dropped, which brings a few surprises about the context of the game's story.

The new character is named Shez, and is not an antagonist, but the new protagonist, referred to at one point as "a mercenary who was meant to fade into the waves of history." They have both male and female versions, and apparently the name can be customized as well. Byleth, meanwhile, seems to be being set up as some kind of antagonist, being repeatedly referred to ominously by her "Ashen Demon" title. (And it's shown that Byleth can also be male or female, in case anyone really didn't think that'd be the case just because they're treating female Byleth as the default.) So, that puts us firmly into an alternate history unconnected to the four paths of the original game right there.

We also get a big "Three diverging paths, which will you choose?" screen, so anyone hoping for/fearing this being a "Golden Route" can probably put that to rest. Probably.

Character-wise, we get a few more confirmed playable characters besides the Lords and Shez + Byleth: Hubert, Dedue, Hilda, and raising a great many questions with no answers, Monica, who is briefly seen as a playable unit during one of the various menu scenes shown in the middle.

And others that are shown but not (yet) shown playable: Flayn, Lorenz, Mercedes, and two previously-unseen characters who are most likely Hilda's brother and Caspar's father (seen at about 2:32 fighting each other). There's also a little sprite that appears to be Anna on one of the map screens (1:32), though being Anna that doesn't mean much I suppose.

Gameplay-wise, we're shown that at least Shez definitely has a class-change mechanic, like in Three Houses itself (their default class seems to be the myrmidon/swordmaster line, since they're usually shown dual-wielding swords). Unclear at this point if that'll apply to everyone, though I'd be surprised if it didn't at least also apply to Byleth. Also, Batallions are in, and grant passive benefits like resistance to axes, and the adjutant/partner system from the first FE Warriors is still in.

So yeah, a lot of interesting reveals there to mull over. I'm very curious where they're going with the story now, for sure - and especially what Monica is doing playable. And I'll be eager to see who else is playable. I am a bit worried about the class system if it applies to everyone, since I prefer individualized movesets for an action game, but eh, if it turns out to be universal, at least then they have no excuse not have everyone from the main roster of the original game be playable.

[Mando Knight]

The game's official Twitter has additional info (translated by Serenes Forest here): Shez lost in battle to the Ashen Demon before the start of Three Houses. In Three Hopes, Arval revives Shez (and may have a similar setup to Sothis and Byleth), who then meets the students from the Officer's Academy while training for revenge.

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Presumably, this means that Sothis remains dormant for now, as Shez encountering the princelings and bandits rather than Byleth means the catalyst for awakening her power doesn't occur. Additionally, Alois therefore wouldn't run into Jeralt when catching up to the students and so Byleth does not become the Professor. Instead, Byleth remains (for now) the emotionally-empty vessel for Sothis' return, the Ashen Demon who somehow was a level 1 Commoner in Three Houses in spite of being a renowned mercenary.

Because Jeralt and Byleth are not present at Garreg Mach during Edelgard's year at the Officer's Academy, Kronya has no opportunity yet to break the Monica cover and assassinate the former. She will presumably still insert herself into the Black Eagles in some fashion, and becomes playable instead of being conspicuously unusable even in the Black Eagles route.

Arval seems to be linked to the Agarthans, a connection which would further a rivalry between Shez and Byleth. If Monica is playable, are Those Who Slither in the Dark allies in this game, or will they discard Shez in a gambit to destroy the Heart of the Creator, as Solon did Kronya in Three Houses?

[Razade]

Already have it preordered. Haven't watched the trailer yet but what snippits I've caught, and read here, has me pretty hyped. Something work through after I tackle Dark Souls 3.

[Zevox]

The game's official Twitter has additional info (translated by Serenes Forest here): Shez lost in battle to the Ashen Demon before the start of Three Houses. In Three Hopes, Arval revives Shez (and may have a similar setup to Sothis and Byleth), who then meets the students from the Officer's Academy while training for revenge.

Spoiler: Speculation

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Presumably, this means that Sothis remains dormant for now, as Shez encountering the princelings and bandits rather than Byleth means the catalyst for awakening her power doesn't occur. Additionally, Alois therefore wouldn't run into Jeralt when catching up to the students and so Byleth does not become the Professor. Instead, Byleth remains (for now) the emotionally-empty vessel for Sothis' return, the Ashen Demon who somehow was a level 1 Commoner in Three Houses in spite of being a renowned mercenary.

Because Jeralt and Byleth are not present at Garreg Mach during Edelgard's year at the Officer's Academy, Kronya has no opportunity yet to break the Monica cover and assassinate the former. She will presumably still insert herself into the Black Eagles in some fashion, and becomes playable instead of being conspicuously unusable even in the Black Eagles route.

Arval seems to be linked to the Agarthans, a connection which would further a rivalry between Shez and Byleth. If Monica is playable, are Those Who Slither in the Dark allies in this game, or will they discard Shez in a gambit to destroy the Heart of the Creator, as Solon did Kronya in Three Houses?

Interesting.

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As far as Monica goes, my question would be: if Jeralt never returned to the monastery in this timeline, and her whole reason for infiltrating the monastery was to kill him, why is Kronya passing herself off as Monica and infiltrating the monastery at all in this timeline? No matter what, there's questions that'll need answering around her and what she's doing due to things like that.

Plus there's the off chance that maybe the timeline has been changed so much that this is the real Monica, and not Kronya at all, which would raise even more questions.

[Mando Knight]

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I don't think Kronya's presence was primarily to assassinate Jeralt at all, but rather killing him was an opportunity too good for her to pass up. Even without the Fell Star (as Those Who Slither in the Dark call Byleth) present at Garreg Mach, "re-"inserting "Monica" into that year's Black Eagles gives the Agarthans a plausible cover for another agent being in Edelgard's inner circle. She is, after all, the weapon they created to destroy the Church of Seiros and the remnants of the Nabateans that run it.

There is a possibility that Three Hopes features the "real" Monica, but we won't really be able to tell until the game is released (or leaked, I suppose).

[Zevox]

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I don't think Kronya's presence was primarily to assassinate Jeralt at all, but rather killing him was an opportunity too good for her to pass up. Even without the Fell Star (as Those Who Slither in the Dark call Byleth) present at Garreg Mach, "re-"inserting "Monica" into that year's Black Eagles gives the Agarthans a plausible cover for another agent being in Edelgard's inner circle. She is, after all, the weapon they created to destroy the Church of Seiros and the remnants of the Nabateans that run it.

There is a possibility that Three Hopes features the "real" Monica, but we won't really be able to tell until the game is released (or leaked, I suppose).

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Eh, perhaps, but I'm not sure that adds up. The impression that I get from Three Houses is that Edelgard knew who Monica was (hence all the time they spent together), which would rule out her being there mainly to keep tabs on Edelgard, I'd think, since she'd be far more effective at that if Edelgard didn't know who she really was. And at the time they planted her, they still had Thomas there as well, so their need for an additional agent at that time seems less than clear. Plus they didn't seem to have any trouble arranging to meet with Edelgard when they wanted to.

Plus, if her mission was to be their agent at Edelgard's side, blowing her cover the way she did was really dumb of her, since it guaranteed failure of her main mission. Sure, she killed Jeralt, but she did so knowing she was right in front of Byleth, so there was zero chance she was getting away with it without her cover being blown. Which doesn't make it seem like that great of an opportunity for her. I mean, maybe she was just dumb, she isn't exactly portrayed as a scheming mastermind or anything, but nor does she come across a bumbler making a massive mistake when does that.

[Mando Knight]

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They're not necessarily covering their tracks from Edelgard, but from the rest of the world at large. As soon as "Monica" joins the Black Eagles she and Edelgard are thick as thieves in every route, displaying something of a conspiratorial closeness she otherwise only shares with Hubert. Having Kronya as an Agarthan enforcer within Edelgard's immediate coterie allows for a closer handle on the situation, particularly where other agents (including but presumably not limited to Solon, Cornelia, or Thales himself) may not be able to act directly. (As an aside from that, the Agarthans do have some reason to desire more control over their Flame Emperor, whose revolutionary tendencies cause her to antagonize everyone who might suppose to use her as a puppet)

Thales and Solon do seem to regard Kronya assassinating Jeralt as something of an error, as Thales finds it necessary to reveal himself to Byleth in order to protect Kronya from counter-attack... only for her next assignment to be both bait and ritual sacrifice to seal Byleth away. Jeralt may be the strongest of the Knights of Seiros, but I find it hard to believe that he was actually the primary target when both Byleth and Rhea (and Seteth and Flayn) are also present at the monastery.

[Zevox]

New trailer today, highlighting the Blue Lion House. And showing us that all eight of the class members from it are playable. I'd say that means we can fully expect that the same will be true of the Black Eagles and Golden Deer, which is pretty nice. Just means the question marks are the Church/Monastery characters, Ashen Wolves, and side-characters. The Ashen Wolves I wouldn't be surprised to see as DLC... again. The others, much harder to guess.

As far as the Blue Lions themselves, looking good. Everybody's got an at least somewhat new outfit - Felix notably seems to have borrowed his from his dad. And he also seems to have borrowed some of Lyn's sword moves from the first Fire Emblem Warriors, which I quite like personally. And it's pretty clear that Mercedes and Anette's magic is not just reskins of each other, too, so that's promising. Anette even briefly uses a Bolt Axe, though it does look like it's one of her supers, not a standard move.

[Mando Knight]

Anette even briefly uses a Bolt Axe, though it does look like it's one of her supers, not a standard move.

Bolt Axe is a good sign for Annette, since it implies that later she may also get access to Crusher. We also see a flash of Felix holding the Sword of Moralta in a cutscene, but his gameplay is shown using what's probably either an Iron or Steel Sword.

[Zevox]

Black Eagles and Golden Deer trailers are out, fully confirming that we've got the entirety of all three classes playable. Like with the Blue Lions, most characters have at least somewhat new looks as well. Most them are as you'd expect, but a few stick out to me. Dorothea's leaning into her songstress status, firing off magical musical notes for some of her attacks - though also dropping fire and lightning, as you'd expect. Interestingly, Petra appears to be in the Assassin class rather Swordmaster - she's dual-wielding short swords, and uses a bow at one point as well. She also has probably the most eye-catching outfit change of the Black Eagles, with an odd hair net I'm not particularly fond of, but oh well there. Caspar also seems to be defaulting to the axe fighter line, though he does do some fisticuffs at one point too.

Among the Golden Deer, Rafael is sporting a bandana now and is defaulting to the fist-fighter classes. Lorenz appears to get to be a magic-using Cavalier (or a Dark Knight who isn't stuck with a black outfit), with some very unique looking magic in his arsenal; I quite like how they're handling him. Ignatz gets paint splotch effects with his archery, which is cool/silly. Also, Leonie's design uses her shorter hairdo from pre-time-skip, which gets my approval.

Lysithea is the one really sticking out like a sore thumb to me though, in that she seems to be using a lot of light magic, and at one point, ice. Which she can't use in Three Houses - all of her Reason spells are dark magic, and while she does learn offensive faith spells, she's very much a reason caster first and foremost. Every other caster in the game seems to line up with what they actually get to do in Three Houses, so it's weird to see Lysithea be an exception . I wonder if that means they're still gender-locking the Dark Mage classes and didn't want to give her dark magic when she can't access the classes for it?

[SerTabris]

In Three Houses, Lysithea does technically have a strength in both Reason and Faith. While nothing in her learn list there is as notable as Dark Spikes, Seraphim is nice to have against monsters and she's the only mage in the base game that gets it. (Plus, the only DLC mage that gets Seraphim is Hapi, the one character who doesn't get anything out of its anti-monster bonus.) I'd say her having offensive light magic as well as dark would be pretty reasonable, though ice is weird. Petra as an Assassin is also what I'd expect; it's a good class for her and it's what an enemy Petra is if/when she's fought in Part 2.

Either way, I'm mostly liking the new designs, and I'm looking forward to the game. I've never played anything in the genre before, so I have no idea if I'll like it gameplay-wise; I guess I'll see if it grabs me enough to play through all the houses or if I'm just going to do the Black Eagles' route (which is the same thing I asked myself with the original, since FE3H was my first full playthrough of an FE game).

[Zevox]

In Three Houses, Lysithea does technically have a strength in both Reason and Faith. While nothing in her learn list there is as notable as Dark Spikes, Seraphim is nice to have against monsters and she's the only mage in the base game that gets it. (Plus, the only DLC mage that gets Seraphim is Hapi, the one character who doesn't get anything out of its anti-monster bonus.) I'd say her having offensive light magic as well as dark would be pretty reasonable, though ice is weird.

Sure, but her offensive Faith magic rarely gets used, simply due to offensive faith magic in Three Houses being almost entirely inferior to Reason magic. Seraphim is the one exception, granted, but even that can be worse than reason spells against monsters at times since it's so much harder to double-attack with. And since she makes a poor healer due to her sole healing spell being the basic Heal, that means even assuming you teach her Faith as well, she'll use Reason magic far more. And besides, Lysithea's default class in the game was Mage, not Priest, and she's clearly intended as the Reason caster of the Golden Deer house.

All that said, if she were mixing light and dark magic, I could understand that - and it does look briefly like she might be doing that for the last attack we see. But mostly seeing light magic from her, and seeing an elemental spell she straight-up cannot learn to use in Three Houses, while also seeing next to no dark magic, is extremely strange. Being the one dark magic user in the game besides Hubert* is kind of the most stand-out thing about her fighting style.

*Okay, Edelgard technically gets some dark magic too if you teach her reason magic, but most people won't since she's more inclined towards physical classes; and Hapi gets it, but I'm not counting her because she's DLC. Nits picked.**
**Also, wow, I knew Dark Mage being locked to males was weird due to Lysithea getting so much dark magic, but it never occurred to me before that even besides Lysithea, literally everyone who gets any dark magic besides Hubert is female. Goddamn, that decision makes so little sense...

Petra as an Assassin is also what I'd expect; it's a good class for her and it's what an enemy Petra is if/when she's fought in Part 2.

I actually wasn't aware of that last, since the only times I've fought some of the recruitable characters in part 2, it's been on the Crimson Flower path. Makes sense, then.

[SerTabris]

That's fair, though I always thought of her endgame class as Gremory (also what Part 2 enemy Lysithea has). She does also get Warp in her Faith list, which I found pretty useful. Definitely agree not having dark magic is weird though.

Spoiler: Crimson Flower route

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Technically, there is a second male character who learns some dark magic! Jeritza. He has a mixed black magic/dark magic list, like Edelgard does.

Also agree that dark mage being male-only is particularly weird, even by the standards of gender-locked classes (which were pretty much always a bad idea anyway, one thing that Fates gets right).