I want to start off by saying this is a great game. You should go buy it. It’s just there are a number of things that bother me. And no, this isn’t about representation or any of that nonsense. It’s about certain gameplay aspects that annoy me to no end.
Axes are pretty much useless early on. They have the highest attack (or MT as it’s actually called) but they’ll most likely miss and then you’ll get doubled. Even if you connect, you probably won’t one shot anything. So you wind up using one of the other weapon types anyway so what’s the point?
The Master Classes come off as lazy to me. Yes, they’re great to have but there’s a severe lack of variety. The majority of them are just different type of person on a horse. Two classes are locked to females and one class is locked to males. And only one of them kind of makes since because females have always been the ones to ride Pegasuses (Pegasusi?) in the series. Grimores are the final mage form and are locked to women as well so any male mages have to pick up Lances and Riding. Men get War Master for a reason I’ll get to next (which also baffles me). There are other classes in the lower ranks that are locked to gender but those give a lot more options. Another concern is that if a unit is trying to master Lances, they’re completely locked to the mounted units. There’s not like a spear fighter class. The biggest offender to me is the Dark Mage. Not only do you need a Dark Seal (which can be incredibly hard to get) but it’s locked to men when the series most famous (or maybe infamous is a better word for it) Dark Mage is Tharja. A female. What?
There’s a new weapon type in Brawling. Which is just going up to all these soldiers and punching them (sometimes kicking them too). I love this weapon type BUT there are some issues with it. First and foremost is that the main class line involving this weapon type are locked to men only. Even though I gave Hilda some Iron Gauntlets and she wrecked pretty much everything that’s not a heavy armor type of unit, it’s kind of pointless since that won’t lead to a major class. They have very low MT but are the only weapons (from what I can tell) that always double on your turn and with high enough SPD, you can quadruple. They also have a higher crit rate. The other thing is that they don’t have much MT so you have to have a high STR stat to begin with.
My biggest gripe out of everything though are these goddamn enemy swordsman. I hate them with a passion of a thousand suns! They have super high attack speed (something that the game doesn’t even bother explaining) so they’ll double most of your units, they have an insane amount of movement range (it’s about the same as horse mounted units) so unless you can funnel them, they’re gonna go kill your mages and there’s nothing you can do about it and the game LOVES to spam these guys early on almost guaranteeing you’re going to lose someone if you’re playing in Classic Mode. Mages are still kind of annoying. Because they’re mages. And fuck whoever deiced to give archers three range with bows.
I like the concept if battalions but it could have been done a little better. Most of the time, it just feels like it exists just to get a free hit in. That’s really my only gripe with it.
There is a problem with leveling up and I know it’s kind of a sereis staple but I’m still going to call bullshit on it. It’s pretty easy to get RNG screwed and the only thing you can do is start over again. Like having Caspar not gain a single point in STR or DEF by Level 10. But he gained a lot of magic for some reason. But I’m trying to make him a Brawler. So much for my plans. But even though he’s gained a lot of Magic he still pales in comparison to Dorothea or Linhardt (who are set up to be mages to begin with). So Caspar is now pretty much useless.
Next is a double point. Recruitment and boosting your own skills. Both are a pain (unless you’re on New Game+ which lets you buy Support Levels with Renown). Most of the characters you can recruit require some skill in Rank C or higher. As well as a specific stat somewhere in the 10-25 range. The only stat that gets higher than 20 is Charm for some reason. My guess is that you can purposely raise Charm with Tea Parties. You can raise your skills in battle (takes forever) or by spending AP with the other Professors. But not everyone teaches the same thing and some professors just won’t be around during certain months. This game really wants Byleth to stick with swords or learn magic. Those are the three most prevalent things that the other Professors can teach you. Your students, however, get Skill EXP AUTOMATICALLY at the end of most weeks. You do not. And the thing with the other Professors you can’t even do until three months in. You’ll be a bit behind no matter what you do. The other way to recruit them is by getting their support rank to B and then maybe if you’re really lucky they’ll come to you during the week. Hope you like resetting a lot. And I mean a lot. The chance is very, very low. Unless you can get them to Rank A Support. Which is impossible to do unless you’re in New Game+. Oh, some characters have their B Support locked to after the Time Skip and the game will not tell you which ones until you’re about to unlock it.
I love the concept of this feature but I do feel it’s not very involving. You’re just choosing one of three options (and there’s so much RNG that it’s actually possible to have three bad options) in the hopes that they’ll like it. But there’s no dialogue from them unless you get all three right. I really think they should say something about the topic so you can get to know them better. Instead it’s just a different sound effect. Lame.
Speaking of Support, I have some gripes with those as well. Aside from later ranks being locked to after the time skip, you cannot view them unless you’re at the base. And even then, for any of the supports that have to do with Byleth, you have to hunt them down in Explore. What if I don’t want to explore on this day? For a game about player choice, they seem to want to take a lot of choice away from the player.
The Fluffy Weeb 