Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Fire Emblem Matchmaker: Birthright Edition

I've been playing Fire Emblem: Birthright in my spare (and not-so-spare) time, and a while back I got to the point where I had most of the first group of characters that could matched up and married to each other. In order to match people up properly, though, I had to get every potential pair's support level to A in order to view their support conversations and make informed decisions about who best matched up with who.

After hours and hours of grinding, I finally watched all of those conversations and set about pairing people up. So here, for your pleasure, I present each pairing I made along with their reasoning. Feel free to compare and contrast with your own pairings, and by all means let me know all the reasons my choices were blasphemous.

Oboro and Silas

The first people I tend to match up are the people I like. I always prefer to see the people I like get the best match, so essentially they get first pick.

Oboro is probably my favorite of the girls. Maybe it's the way she frightens people even though she's a sweetheart. Really, though, all around she just seems like a good, well-rounded individual complete with passions, skills, and just a bit of xenophobia she's trying to work through. She just seems like a fun person to be around, so I paired her up with a real stand-up guy.

Silas, as a Nohrian, sets off Oboro's xenophobia radar like crazy at first. However, he's just such a swell guy that I think he'll serve as a constant reminder to Oboro that Nohrians aren't monsters. They seem like two people capable of adoring each other for the long haul.

Setsuna and Kaden

Setsuna is my other favorite girl, but for very different reasons than Oboro. I just found her fun to watch. Her general uselessness and seeming inability to recognize an insult endeared her to me quite a bit. Plus, she particularly frustrated some of the stuffiest characters, who I often didn't much care for.

Kaden is a pretty fun guy, though it was only due to support conversations that I ended up pairing him with Setsuna. Frankly, I don't think most of the other guys, even the good-natured ones, would have really had the patience to be a good match for Setsuna. Kaden, however, seemed to have a special kind of patience for her, and in the end they built a relationship on helping each other and having mutually unconventional outlooks on life.

I was really happy with this pairing. I don't think there's a better one for Setsuna.

Azura and Ryoma

The royal family presented a sort of problem for me. Their options were fairly limited, since naturally the siblings couldn't marry each other (except, for the reason, the main character...), which understandably limited their options.

This pairing was kind of weird, since in some ways Ryoma and Azura were raised as siblings. However, it seemed like they both always understood that this was a political move, and though Ryoma was protective of her, Azura always kept her new "family" at a distance. Since they never even really pretended to be siblings, this match-up made a decent amount of sense to me.

Both Azura and Ryoma are serious-minded, burden-bearing, and just a bit awkward. Here's hoping Azura finally actually feels like part of the family. And, as leader of the Hoshido, there really weren't many more appropriate choices for Ryoma.

Main character and Azama

My main character for this storyline was a girl. Unfortunately, though, this storyline was kind of lacking in suitable suitors. Silas and Kaze seemed like obvious choices, but they were too... expected. Boring, even. Ryoma and Takumi are both right out, of course; they're technically available, but they're my character's brothers, so no thanks. I was tempted to just hold off and wait for better options to present themselves, but apparently children in this game are mostly determined by the father, meaning Silas's child will always be Sophie no matter who the mother is, and so on. The only women with children of their own are Azura and a female main character. As such, I knew I had to match up with someone from this set of dudes so that Kana (the main character's child) would have a sibling.

I ended up settling for Azama. He's a real jerk, and I had planned to match him up with Orochi so they could spend the rest of their lives bickering with each other. However, though I wasn't fond of Azama, I had to admit he was an interesting fellow. Condescending, but thoughtful. Also, he and the main character seemed to get along pretty well in their support conversations. It wasn't an easy choice, but there weren't many better options, either.

Mozu and Subaki

Not much thought really went into this pairing. It was mostly just, "these two characters are decent folk, and they'd probably be decent to each other." I might have teamed up Hana with Subaki instead, which would have put Mozu with Takumi, making Mozu a princess; a nice rags to riches story. However, I specifically decided to avoid pairing retainers up with their own partners, since that seemed too easy.

Hana and Takumi

Takumi seemed like a real jerk at first, but he grew on me over the course of support conversations. Also, he's a real powerhouse, which really improved my perception of him and made me forgiving of his past transgressions. Though competitive, stubborn, and impatient, Takumi seems like a generally good guy.

As a childhood friend of Takumi, Hana seemed like a good fit at the time. In retrospect, it might have been a bit forced. Still, their personalities are pretty similar, so I'm sure they'll get along well enough.

Hinoka and Kaze

Two dutiful, skillful, good-natured people. This was an easy pairing. Just as I didn't want retainers dating their partners, I likewise didn't want royalty dating their own retainers. Luckily, though Kaze is definitely subordinate to Hinoka, he's a free agent as far as retainers go, so it wasn't too weird hooking these two up.

Kagero and Jakob

Two retainers willing to die for their respective masters. Jakob was generally rude and cold to most people, but he seemed to get along well with Kagero. They seemed to have a lot in common, and they seem to connect on an intellectual level. I can't see Jakob being condescending to Kagero, which is something I can't really say about him regarding any of the other girls.

Sakura and Hayato

Kids should hang out with other kids. Otherwise, it's pretty weird.

Orochi and Saizo

This was basically the last pairing I decided on. Saizo's pretty lame, and I wasn't sure if I wanted Saizo to be with the equally stern and serious Rinka or with Orochi, who is sure to relentlessly torture and tease the poor bastard for the rest of his life. I decided on the torture route. Sorry, Saizo.

??? and Hinata

The only girl I don't have yet is Felicia. I'm not entirely sure yet if I'll be pairing Hinata with her or Rinka, since I don't really know what Felicia is like. I'm not a huge fan of Hinata, so I don't really care who he ends up with. It mostly just depends on what Felicia ends up being like.

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With the exception of Hinata, all of these relationships are locked in. I'm already gathering all of their children. I wonder if the Conquest group will be any easier to match...

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