#four hounds

Your army is not to be trifled with. Because I respect you, I will hold nothing back.

The Fell Xenologue; a story in which Alear is permanently dead and their allies’ darker impulses took them over. To me, the Fell Xenologue counterparts of the characters in this game each represents the darker aspects of these characters or what they could have been had a butterfly effect reversed things.

Alfred and Céline in this timeline are in the event that Alear was unable to their kingdom and their mother. It may not be one for one, but Alfred and Céline are notable the most similar to their original counterparts. Only except for fact that they have lost themselves to malice.

Céline in this timeline is desperate to go to war with Brodia in order to salvage her kingdom from decline. If you have Céline from the main timeline fight against FX!Céline, she is FAR from please to see her other self go to such extremes. Showing that, despite our Céline willingness to do anything for her nation, being a warmonger is not one of those lines she would cross.

What I love about the Fell Xenologue is how, through the boss dialogue with most of the royals, we see how much the cast care about one another. Such as with Lapis vs FX!Alcryst or Rosado and Goldmary against Hortensia.

Now that isn’t to say that all of the examples are just simply Opposite Day characters are flipped from good to bad. There is a positive example within the Four Winds, the counterparts to the Four Hounds; a group that serves Sombron and is a thorn in Alear’s side.

The Four Winds serve as Alear and Nel’s allies throughout the Fell Xenologue. Just as the Royals are our enemies in the Fell Xenologue; in contrast the main story, the Winds are essentially to Nel what the Four Primary Royals were to Alear. A Five Man Band that serves the protagonists of the story.

Speaking of Nel, this is a more metaphorical example, but Nel and Nil actually serve as the Alear and Veyle in this story. While Alear and Veyle are confirmed to have Fell Xenologue counterparts; both of them are dead. With Alear’s death being the crux of Alt. Elyos’s fall out and Veyle was killed, hence this version of Mauvier’s defection.

Draw Gregory/Griss in your style. If you don’t know what he looks like, here’s the picture

I'll watch the cutscenes, but I'm skipping chapters 21 and everything up until the fight with Sombron. I already don't have too much love for Mauvier or Veyle, and Alear dying in chapter 21, only to come back as an emblem...I really don't like it. I don't like it one bit. As a storytelling decision, it leaves so much to be desired. It annoys me to no end, and I cannot engage with something that'll only bring me anger and frustration. I just can't do it. Even the idea of using Mauvier in my main party frustrates me, because he's so boring! He's the worst of the main villians, not including Sombron.

Sombron shows up less than Mauvier prior to chapter 20, and somehow they both share a complete lack of character. Beyond "evil" for Sombron and "stoic" for Mauvier, I legitimately got nothing from their characters. Griss has his sadomasochism. Marni has her insecure desire for praise. Zephia has a twisted idea of what love is, and she's also just cartoonishly evil in all the best ways. I get those three. But Mauvier and Sombron leave me wanting more. I get it with Sombron, the final bosses in fire emblem are always kind of devoid of character to me. But Mauvier had ample time to show me his personality. He just... didn't.

FE7 had that in spades with the Black Fang, but there was a bunch of memorable one map shit heels in Tellius. I think the last time we really had this was in FE Awakening. The biggest stand out being Mustafa who would go on to get a Fire Emblem Heroes unit.

But in Fates, Three Houses, and Engage? Not so much. Fates was sad because clearly Kozaki was trying to make the capturable characters memorable in their design. But many are locked in paralogues, not the main story.

Three Houses has plenty of generic map generals. Part of it is most likely due to expecting you to not recruit ever kid so the weight if fighting these grown up students be a big maps. But if you’re replaying on New Game+ it’s easy to avoid that. I guess Metodey was the best they had for one offs, but he was no Mustafa.

Engage tries to avoid the pitfalls of having one underdeveloped boss for a map by instead making four villains you fight multiple times to establish them as characters and threats. But that had the issue that a lot of their fights blend into each other and I know quite a few who were fighting the same four guys.