~Arcfalchion

I can't say I like the direction they took with this one. Not at all. Newbs be warned, I'm going to get technical. All info taken from serenesforest.net and the Neoseeker forums.

*Class swap. Being able to change your characters' class on the fly is, well... meh. It kind of kills the strategy, imo. Hurting for mobility? Turn your priest into a cavalier! XD

The one good thing about this is that it lets you experiment to find combinations that work for a character. Doga is a good mercenary, or so I've been told. But wow. Some of the characters in this have great growth rates, others don't- hit up the Serenes Forest site to see just how broken Wolf and Zagaro are.

*Sending a character to die. Not to give anything away but you can't clear the prologue without at least one of your characters dying off. And that's just... depressing. Also you must kill off multiple characters to access gaiden chapters and new units, which doesn't seem all that appealing. I'll take Norn over Gordon as an archer but since I'll be getting two broken horsemen (Wolf and Zagaro again) a few chapters later, the point of this is...?

*Multiplayer. I'm not even going to bother with this one... it sounds really half-hearted, a step up from the Link Arena in the GBA titles but there's still only one map. Boo.

*Graphics. To be honest, the game looks a lot better in motion, but some of the face sprites annoy me to no end. There are a few nice ones such as Wolf (again lol. I <3 him) and Etzel, but a majority of the faces aren't that memorable. And I didn't think it was possible but they made Kashim look like an even bigger dweeb than before. Congrats.

*Marth not promoting. A minor complaint, and one that doesn't really need to be addressed since he never promoted, even in previous games. Never got a horse, no extra weapons, but since he can't even class swap, he's stuck with a pathetic 20% defense growth for the entire game. He does have a level cap of 30, like characters from Genealogy of the Holy War, but it's still not a promotion.

*Supports suck worse than Radiant Dawn's. You heard me. None of the characters have an affinity, so no +45 avoid bonuses for you. I suppose it's still an important part of the game but... I liked the old supports from the GBA games and Path of Radiance a lot better.

-----
tl;dr: Maybe I'm just being traditional but I don't like the changes this series has been going through. I guess I'll see it for myself if/when this game is released in the US, but these are just first impressions and I'm sure any number of FE fans out there are having similar doubts about this game... let's just hope it won't be a total letdown.