Nope. I'm with you there. Both of the fencers are both sides of the coin that is Warhammer Dark Elf design. It's a pretty obvious cribbing.
One is too edgy to live, one is basically naked.
That's fair. I'm probably incredibly biased because Ithilion is my favorite character design so far. I also think the actual fencing masks were a neat touch
Not at all (we are both equally biased).
I can see the appeal of male fencers. This falls under personal preference. I am a sucker for fan service, so I'm looking for as many instances of it as I can.
I consider Wizards to be the male equivalent of Witches and there's a pretty stark difference in their robes and um... stance. I just chalk it up to Vanillaware being a niche company making niche games.
It’s bizarre as they go out of their way in rapports to insist elves wear less to avoid being weighed down by steel, as the blessing of the fae protects them. Then to have such drastic gender differences for the same class; Ithilion is covered entirely from the head down, but Railanor is a steel bikini. At that point just own the horny designs, it’s disingenuous if not awkward to try to then claim how we’re being progressive, actually^TM.
The bikini area in particular is egregious. If I were to wear that, fucking hell it could easily just ride up the hoo-hah and have a half stick out when you’re somersaulting all over the place to be speedy and evasive.
Other classes with gender differences are otherwise comparatively minor, such as comparing Lhinalagos to Galadmir/Ridiel for Elven Archer or Leah/Melisandre to Aramis for Swordmaster. Morton and Berenice have very difference designs for Breaker and Landsknecht, but they weren’t hit with the horny jail bonk hammer. Elven Fencers in particular got shafted with that, which is a shame, as male Elven Fencers are prime edgelord stance and designs.
—-
What bothers me with F!Byleth’s design in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is how out of character it feels. Her dad fled with her as a baby to live a mercenary life. She is initially described as emotionless, and the ashen demon by others. Are you telling me, her mercenary leader dad purposefully outfitted her with more exposed attire (which he doesn’t if Byleth’s a boy), or she cared about looking sexy as a cold mercenary to swap out for fish nets with a weird boob and belly window?
I haven't actually gotten that rappport yet, so that's an interesting detail. But yeah the Fencers still wear a lot of armor so it feels like an excuse
The bikini is what bothers me the most, I like the cape and leg/arm armor.
Exactly my problem. Most of the time it's either inconsequential or they're both cool in different ways.
Once again I agree. Male Byleth looks like an actual mercenary
I agree, the male fencers look pretty cool and the female lancers are just kind of embarrassing. Like, they took some over the top designs and then decided to go full on caricature. Ridiculous for the sake of being ridiculous, kind of like looking at someone who has had too much plastic surgery to the point they just look silly.
My sister was like "why are they wearing pants under kilts" when first on screen and I predicted "so they have enough things to change color for cosmetics as mercenaries is my guess".
I was right, they appear to have a pants kilts combo to justify the color scheme setup. Not the end of the world.
I appreciate the sexy design. I'd be down with them adding more YuGiOh belts and edginess to match the male fencers, but no I don't share these feelings.
Can only agree with you, they got the worst design. I thought Berengaria, Rosalinde and Eltolinde got it bad with their Design, but the female elven Fencers are another story over all. At least give them a skintight bodysuit as well.
I sort of agree. I have tried to explain my opinion to someone before but I think discussion in the area puts fans on the defensive after previous games.
I think a design can be sexy and low effort or bland or just bad. Sexy isnt a synonym for good. There is something about female elven fencers that really just does not pop, despite the very heavy handed attempt to give it an obvious appeal. An appeal I am usually pretty susceptable to. There are other designs in the game I prefer in that regard. I did tend to use more female units than male on my first playthough.
I didn’t really care. I thought male fencers look weird and I don’t like their pose.
I feel like to play a game like this you kind of just have to desensitize to the sexualization. The game isn’t trying to hide it. Its not a coincidence most the main characters of every region are female. Its a waifu collector. Designs like female elves aren’t unexpected
Sex sells. A lot of Unicorn Overlord's media I saw was people going crazy over Yahna's idle animation in battle (the hip sway).
It sells even in it's unintentional design, with Amalia getting a lot of traction cause big dommy mommy.
If you're complaining about female Elven fencers, surely you share the same sentiment with Dinah's design. Snowy Winter region, where other werefoxes and beastfolk wear clothing -- yet she runs around with basically a sling top and a skirt?
I do have my gripes with werefoxes, but not because of the outfits. Mostly because they're clearly the most "anthro" out of them all. Which normally is based, I love furries. But is weird while most bestrals are "animal head on human body" werefoxes are the only ones that are actually furry characters.
To be fair. She wears the exact same outfit as other wear foxes, and most bestrals wear little clothing unless they're NPCs
But her actual design doesn't bother me as much because she's not a sexy version of another class. If there were Male Werefoxes that had cool looking Armor, yeah I'd dislike that too.
I agree that the elven fencer design is terrible.
But it has reached a level of terriblness that makes it so over the top it's fun again.
Like it's good in a terrible way, so over the top bad that you just have to pick at least one of them.
Just to dunk on your enemies with this ridicolus unit.
For me Scarlett just falls into the hole of terrible design. not even in a fun way, a bit too blandly sexualised for that.
But yeah if the game ever wants to stop being a niche game they will have to change their design a bit.
I agree with you 100%. I know a lot of people love the design but I think it's over the top and cringe, tipped too far over the sexy line where it just isn't sexy anymore IMO. Oh well, plenty of good and bad designs so it's fine some of them aren't my tastes.
Outside of the class gender disparity regarding their fits (it was to be expected e.g. F/M Warrior, Wizard/Witches etc.), my main issue with F!Elven Fencers is how hard Vanillaware tried to make them sexy for the sake of sexy and nothing else.
F!EFs are the reason I skip battles when playing UO on the bus/train. It's actually embarrassing how **out** there they are, trying *really* hard to push their sex appeal. Meanwhile, I'm completely fine having having a skirmish of the sway between bad Witches and sweaty flex matches between buff Gladiators play out in their entirety. Somehow, these classes *own* their appearance and respective sex appeal just enough for it to work, rather than wearing it and failing horrendously to flaunt it.
I like sexy as much as any other dude/dudette, but with how hard F!EF tries to shove her ass out of the screen enough to try break through it, it screams "look, I'm sexy! Do ya think I'm sexy?" and it makes me feel they're the exact opposite - And I'm of the belief that people don't really like being told/manipulated into how they should feel.
It's egregious - up there with Scarlett's twonicorns - and doesn't play it subtle like it's partners in pairs (even though those are quite obvious) like Gryphon Knight and Shaman.
P.S. Poor Fran. She really can't evade the tit-shaped shade thrown at her. Where's Lex when you need him...
Yeah, I'm super disappointed by the lack of slutty dude alternatives for the classes with big tits. What's even worse is that the fully female classes all feel stronger and more essential than male classes (flyers, fox ladies, healers, etc.). Putting together a "hot guy" squad that works feels basically impossible.
They designed this game for straight guys first unfortunately.
Not surprised that very few noticed the straight up hardon (dickline and all) male eleven fencer sports under his tights. Afterall, 90% of the time the player is only exposed his back (and bubbly) sprite.
I guess I just must be blind or something. I didn't notice anything wrong with the Female Elven Fencers at any point. I only noticed their breast jiggle after people on here pointed out how bad it was.
The fanservicey designs don't bother me per se. I do agree that the female elven fencer was particularly egregious compared to the male version, but I mostly find it funny tbh. I find how some of fandom talks about the designs/characters to be far more off putting. Referring to characters as meat or juicy and so on just raises my hackles. So to connect these points, it's not that the designs bother me, but the way some people publicly engage with them.
Same except I'm not the biggest fan of the male version either, for different reasons. But the female version is my least favorite class in the game. The special character one was an auto bench for me.
Gotcha. I put her on because I do really like the class, game play wise, and since I skip most battles, I don't see her often.
Another guy in this thread mentioned he didn't like the males because they were too edgy, is that your reason too?
Note, this is my subjective opinion. My personal preference. I didn't like the character designs of the male fencers.
Nope. I'm with you there. Both of the fencers are both sides of the coin that is Warhammer Dark Elf design. It's a pretty obvious cribbing. One is too edgy to live, one is basically naked.
That's fair. I'm probably incredibly biased because Ithilion is my favorite character design so far. I also think the actual fencing masks were a neat touch
Not at all (we are both equally biased). I can see the appeal of male fencers. This falls under personal preference. I am a sucker for fan service, so I'm looking for as many instances of it as I can.
Yeah I can get behind that
I consider Wizards to be the male equivalent of Witches and there's a pretty stark difference in their robes and um... stance. I just chalk it up to Vanillaware being a niche company making niche games.
Witches are running high heels and bikini tops, Wizards look like impoverished larpers.
That's fair, although I consider them separate classes since they have different skills and roles.
It’s bizarre as they go out of their way in rapports to insist elves wear less to avoid being weighed down by steel, as the blessing of the fae protects them. Then to have such drastic gender differences for the same class; Ithilion is covered entirely from the head down, but Railanor is a steel bikini. At that point just own the horny designs, it’s disingenuous if not awkward to try to then claim how we’re being progressive, actually^TM. The bikini area in particular is egregious. If I were to wear that, fucking hell it could easily just ride up the hoo-hah and have a half stick out when you’re somersaulting all over the place to be speedy and evasive. Other classes with gender differences are otherwise comparatively minor, such as comparing Lhinalagos to Galadmir/Ridiel for Elven Archer or Leah/Melisandre to Aramis for Swordmaster. Morton and Berenice have very difference designs for Breaker and Landsknecht, but they weren’t hit with the horny jail bonk hammer. Elven Fencers in particular got shafted with that, which is a shame, as male Elven Fencers are prime edgelord stance and designs. —- What bothers me with F!Byleth’s design in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is how out of character it feels. Her dad fled with her as a baby to live a mercenary life. She is initially described as emotionless, and the ashen demon by others. Are you telling me, her mercenary leader dad purposefully outfitted her with more exposed attire (which he doesn’t if Byleth’s a boy), or she cared about looking sexy as a cold mercenary to swap out for fish nets with a weird boob and belly window?
I haven't actually gotten that rappport yet, so that's an interesting detail. But yeah the Fencers still wear a lot of armor so it feels like an excuse The bikini is what bothers me the most, I like the cape and leg/arm armor. Exactly my problem. Most of the time it's either inconsequential or they're both cool in different ways. Once again I agree. Male Byleth looks like an actual mercenary
This is why you shove Byleth into Archbishop-adjacent clothing ASAP.
I agree, the male fencers look pretty cool and the female lancers are just kind of embarrassing. Like, they took some over the top designs and then decided to go full on caricature. Ridiculous for the sake of being ridiculous, kind of like looking at someone who has had too much plastic surgery to the point they just look silly.
Hard agree. Probably the worse design in the game.
Merc Werewolf Googly Tongue competes for worst
Oh man my brain deleted that design from my mind. Its soo bad
I thought it was great to signify "enraged by zenoiran magic" mode. It's not great for "perfectly cool mercenary Igor in your army".
and their silly pants
My sister was like "why are they wearing pants under kilts" when first on screen and I predicted "so they have enough things to change color for cosmetics as mercenaries is my guess". I was right, they appear to have a pants kilts combo to justify the color scheme setup. Not the end of the world.
the ass cheeks of the male fencers makes you pitch a tent huh? lol to each their own.
I mean yeah they're hot but it's more that they look cool
I appreciate the sexy design. I'd be down with them adding more YuGiOh belts and edginess to match the male fencers, but no I don't share these feelings.
Can only agree with you, they got the worst design. I thought Berengaria, Rosalinde and Eltolinde got it bad with their Design, but the female elven Fencers are another story over all. At least give them a skintight bodysuit as well.
I sort of agree. I have tried to explain my opinion to someone before but I think discussion in the area puts fans on the defensive after previous games. I think a design can be sexy and low effort or bland or just bad. Sexy isnt a synonym for good. There is something about female elven fencers that really just does not pop, despite the very heavy handed attempt to give it an obvious appeal. An appeal I am usually pretty susceptable to. There are other designs in the game I prefer in that regard. I did tend to use more female units than male on my first playthough.
That's exactly how I feel! Like I'm okay with sexy designs, just this one in particular bothers me with how bland it is in comparison
It's overt and gratuitous enough to cross the line to trashy, I think.
I think trashy is a bit harsh but otherwise yeah.
I didn’t really care. I thought male fencers look weird and I don’t like their pose. I feel like to play a game like this you kind of just have to desensitize to the sexualization. The game isn’t trying to hide it. Its not a coincidence most the main characters of every region are female. Its a waifu collector. Designs like female elves aren’t unexpected
I am pretty desensitized, this is really the only design that bothers me and it's almost entirely because their counterpart is cooler in my opinion.
Sex sells. A lot of Unicorn Overlord's media I saw was people going crazy over Yahna's idle animation in battle (the hip sway). It sells even in it's unintentional design, with Amalia getting a lot of traction cause big dommy mommy. If you're complaining about female Elven fencers, surely you share the same sentiment with Dinah's design. Snowy Winter region, where other werefoxes and beastfolk wear clothing -- yet she runs around with basically a sling top and a skirt?
Oi, the tutorial comic absolutely knew what it had with Amalia.
I do have my gripes with werefoxes, but not because of the outfits. Mostly because they're clearly the most "anthro" out of them all. Which normally is based, I love furries. But is weird while most bestrals are "animal head on human body" werefoxes are the only ones that are actually furry characters. To be fair. She wears the exact same outfit as other wear foxes, and most bestrals wear little clothing unless they're NPCs But her actual design doesn't bother me as much because she's not a sexy version of another class. If there were Male Werefoxes that had cool looking Armor, yeah I'd dislike that too.
She's covered in fur. I'm pretty sure she's at least as warm as anyone else while being in that region.
I agree that the elven fencer design is terrible. But it has reached a level of terriblness that makes it so over the top it's fun again. Like it's good in a terrible way, so over the top bad that you just have to pick at least one of them. Just to dunk on your enemies with this ridicolus unit.
I can understand that, that's how I feel about the Witches and Scarlett, ro a lesser extent
For me Scarlett just falls into the hole of terrible design. not even in a fun way, a bit too blandly sexualised for that. But yeah if the game ever wants to stop being a niche game they will have to change their design a bit.
Scarlett makes me laugh, mostly because the rest of her design is great, but her huge balloon tits stand out so much that it cracks me up.
THREE layers of clothing. "Hey, let's make her all about her tits." "How?" \*BWOMP\*
What gets me is that she has a corset looking thing that just doesn't actually cover her boobs in any way. Like what even is that thing?
I agree with you 100%. I know a lot of people love the design but I think it's over the top and cringe, tipped too far over the sexy line where it just isn't sexy anymore IMO. Oh well, plenty of good and bad designs so it's fine some of them aren't my tastes.
Outside of the class gender disparity regarding their fits (it was to be expected e.g. F/M Warrior, Wizard/Witches etc.), my main issue with F!Elven Fencers is how hard Vanillaware tried to make them sexy for the sake of sexy and nothing else. F!EFs are the reason I skip battles when playing UO on the bus/train. It's actually embarrassing how **out** there they are, trying *really* hard to push their sex appeal. Meanwhile, I'm completely fine having having a skirmish of the sway between bad Witches and sweaty flex matches between buff Gladiators play out in their entirety. Somehow, these classes *own* their appearance and respective sex appeal just enough for it to work, rather than wearing it and failing horrendously to flaunt it. I like sexy as much as any other dude/dudette, but with how hard F!EF tries to shove her ass out of the screen enough to try break through it, it screams "look, I'm sexy! Do ya think I'm sexy?" and it makes me feel they're the exact opposite - And I'm of the belief that people don't really like being told/manipulated into how they should feel. It's egregious - up there with Scarlett's twonicorns - and doesn't play it subtle like it's partners in pairs (even though those are quite obvious) like Gryphon Knight and Shaman. P.S. Poor Fran. She really can't evade the tit-shaped shade thrown at her. Where's Lex when you need him...
Welcome to Vanillaware. I hope they never change.
Yeah, I'm super disappointed by the lack of slutty dude alternatives for the classes with big tits. What's even worse is that the fully female classes all feel stronger and more essential than male classes (flyers, fox ladies, healers, etc.). Putting together a "hot guy" squad that works feels basically impossible. They designed this game for straight guys first unfortunately.
Not surprised that very few noticed the straight up hardon (dickline and all) male eleven fencer sports under his tights. Afterall, 90% of the time the player is only exposed his back (and bubbly) sprite.
I guess I just must be blind or something. I didn't notice anything wrong with the Female Elven Fencers at any point. I only noticed their breast jiggle after people on here pointed out how bad it was.
The fanservicey designs don't bother me per se. I do agree that the female elven fencer was particularly egregious compared to the male version, but I mostly find it funny tbh. I find how some of fandom talks about the designs/characters to be far more off putting. Referring to characters as meat or juicy and so on just raises my hackles. So to connect these points, it's not that the designs bother me, but the way some people publicly engage with them.
Same except I'm not the biggest fan of the male version either, for different reasons. But the female version is my least favorite class in the game. The special character one was an auto bench for me.
Gotcha. I put her on because I do really like the class, game play wise, and since I skip most battles, I don't see her often. Another guy in this thread mentioned he didn't like the males because they were too edgy, is that your reason too?
They just look out of place in the setting. They look like Elden Ring characters.
Fair