FE Fates Conquest: Sheesh the difficulty massively spikes toward the end of Conquest, it feels like... the lategame chapters are not screwing around. (Minor gameplay spoilers below)
Anyway, "finished." In quotes because I need to re-do the last mission for real, as I did a no-saves death march for the frue Classic experience, except not because the game let me continue anyway after Corrin scored a surprise Dragon Fang to kill a General!!!... which let ANOTHER General which I hadn't planned on stand on General #1's corpse and Silver Lance Corrin in the face. Well it's not like I wanted to use that stupid Shadow Yato anyway, right? Right? Anyway, yeah, Beruka/Felicia/Camilla all bit it on the first stage (maybe Leo too? Not sure), and while they come back on Casual for the 2nd stage, I opted to pretend like they didn't and swapped 'em for Midori, Kana, & Shura instead. Corrin died to randoms, Shura nobly took out a Dual Guard on the boss before dying horribly, & Selena *could* have survived if there wasn't a Vengeance proc. It was a darn close thing for Xander, too, a Vengeance proc took him to 1 Health (in a pair-up with Effie, no less!). Ow ow ow. Not sure how to play around Vengeance aside from "hope you have some Dual Guards ready to go", especially tricky after your party has probably been blasted to half health off map damage. We'll see when I replay the map, I guess.
C26 also had some pretty nasty sections, now that I think about it. The whole Stoneborn section on the left side of the map is total BS (although thankfully skippable if you want). And the final-ish bot section is crazy nasty, too... too many enemies with random weakness hitting weapons like Beast Killers & Hammers, so you need a really tanky infantry character backed by Rally Defense or the like to survive the onslaught it seems. Maybe my fault for triggering the reinforcements early via Entrap'ing one of the bosses out. Both bosses on that map bit it to Kaze Lethality strikes though, which was pretty funny.
Invasion 3 also seemed ridiculously badass if you don't particularly set up your castle defenses super-optimized. It's not SO bad, and then whoa hordes of mobile, deadly Paladins in a pair-up charging your throne noooo. I just quit out of that one after I saw that wasn't going to work. You could probably hypothetically win via sticking Xander/Effie on the throne, letting your base burn, and feed them all the kills, but that seems pretty lame.
For the ending, I've a few thoughts, but one in particular came up: Considering I married Azura, you'd think Corrin would be more traumatized by Azura disappearing. You just became a single father, bro. And some other character (Camilla? Elise? I forget) lamely comments about how Azura clearly just ran off for a bit or something. Sheesh. If Shigure exists, you'd think they could change their dialogue to be a little more serious here, even for the non "Corrin married her" case, this is, like, seriously horrible.
On a ligher note, I was amused by Niles ending implying he continued to work for Leo, and Leo's ending saying he disappeared mysteriously after the war (because he married Severa and returned to Ylisse). Can't really blame 'em for not adjusting the endings for such a corner case of characters marrying the Yllise crew.
Anyway, my party... [Corrin, Azura], [Niles, Elise], [Kaze, Felicia], [Leo, Selena], Beruka, Camilla, Xander, Sophie (!Beruka), Shigure (!Corrin) , Nina (!Elise) , Forrest (!Selena). Forrest being the last addition who ended up a tad behind on levels and kinda underwhelming, but for extra party slots more staff users + Inspiration bots is always appreciated. Xander & Camilla stayed single, as neither of 'em seemed to really have a sensible match in my head.
B-Team:
Arthur - Saw service early, was fine, would probably be frustrating to use late with that passive & Luck, so swapped out. (Never used Percy!Effie either... that'd feel like child abuse with how old he looks, for all that his passive is rockin'.)
Silas - You were quite useful (when not doubled via holding a Javelin or something) for half the game, but you are entirely obsoleted by your just-better daughter. Sorry bro.
Shura - Decent Adventurer, then Nina joins who is generally better. Totally deployable for a few maps, and probably fine if you don't get Nina too.
Kana (!Azura) - Joined late. Was cool enough but not enough slots.
Midori (!Felicia) - Joined super-late, not amazing stats (slower than bother her parents!) could get doubeld by the fast. Replicate still pretty neat though.
I have some plot comments, but perhaps they'll wait for another time. I was less then pleased with the general way they handled Our Heroes and how everyone reacted to them. There's a great story to be told about a compromised or misled hero, and there's a great story involving a villain protagonist, but this wasn't really either of 'em. Oh well. TO BE CLEAR I liked the game of course, and appreciate the thought behind some of their plot structure! And one plot element in particular, even though it was set up quite poorly, was pretty touching in its own way I thought. Random incompetent grimdark CAN work! The game had real trouble acknowledging that Our Hero was basically running what would fundamentally be a "sympathetic villain" plan in another game, though, and that screws up a lot. Alas.
Anyway, fun times. No Birthright just yet though; after doing the last missions "for real", it'll be DLC time.
