Bright Blades

Played through the current build. It's fun, well-written, and noticeably difficult. Strong recommend to anyone who likes Fire Emblem.

Specific thoughts from my playthrough in case they're helpful for design stuff:

-If you go straight to the setting screen before you've learned the controls and then try to exit back to menu the rpgmaker way (pressing Esc,) you instead close the game. It could be worth having a 'return to main menu' option in the settings menu for people who have just booted the game and don't know Esc is a trap.

-Petting Baldur is a spectacular mechanic. Absolute serotonin in game form. However, you may want to mention pets can be repeated, and that some chapters have talks between characters that work the same as pets. I'm pretty sure I've missed a few pets because I didn't realize this. Also the trial-and-error of mashing people next to each other to generate talk commands feels kinda frustrating. This is a part of the FE formula that I'm glad later FEs streamlined.

-Dead levels. I know they're part of the FE formula, but it would be nice to have +1 HP or +1 Luck instead of a dead level.

-Good lord map 4 is hard on normal. You're really reliant on a good rng seed winnowing down enemy numbers or having known this map was coming and power-levelling a character to formation-break your way through it. Also every time you die you have to wait through the rng fighting itself again. A map 3.5 or a shop or something to help you gear up for it would help a lot. I'm also genuinely not sure this map is possible on harder difficulties unless allied units also benefit from the stat-scaling.

-Weapons not having durability is interesting. Durability is FE's check on always-use-the-powerful-weapon gameplay, and shops are FE's check to running out of weapons and bricking your save. Without durability, I think there's room for a meta where all weapons are equally good but all do different things, but I'm not quite sure that's how they currently work.

-Oh, thieves can steal people's weapons without even risking getting countered? The game's hard, so I'm glad for all the tools I can get my hands on, but this feels mega busted. At least it's a solution for enemy mages.

-I'm on map 6, and enemy magic feels like a bit of a one-shot machine. Thrud strolled into the gigantic range of a lightning mage and got instantly crit killed from full health, and this sorta makes the only tool for dealing with mage groups the antimagic harp. And even then, you need a character who can reliably one-shot mages because they have to keep dancing back in and out of reach to refresh their buffs, and the rest of the team has to keep backpedaling to make sure the mages don't lock onto anyone else and instakill them. Because any character dying = game over, high dps enemies with decent crit potential means there's a certain amount of rng to whether you have to reset each run. I don't think this map is impossible. I can sandbag it. But even on normal it feels like it's made more for save states than for regular console play.

I'm only at map 6, and I might take a break, but I'll thread more feedback here if I'm able to play further.

Do keep in mind I've only played up to chapter 19. I've played on normal, and I've played through the first 6 or so levels on the highest difficulty as well.

So starting with the good stuff:

• Your tutorials are excellent. I think the pedagogy part of what you've put together is by far the strongest element. Using the dog to introduce the interaction mechanic is just brilliant, and you strike a good balance of explaining things without giving all the answers.
• Your dancer-replacement is extremely pleasant to play with without feeling overpowered. I love how they fill that "problem solver" role more fully, and the design of that class is just amazing start to finish.
• I enjoy how you're leaning into the story. My one note on the writing is to pull some inspiration from comic books or graphic novels and lean a bit heavier on onomatopoeia and other ways to turn text into action. 
• The class system is straightforward and forgiving, while still presenting some real tasty choices. I'd enjoy some further specialization of unique units where its either more of a lateral change or where one of the options closely matches the strengths of their base class. Something along the lines of options for mobility or defensive tools but they come at a steep cost. 
• A number of your levels are fantastic. The ones that really stick out are all the ones where the mechanics are really story driven. Chapter 13 and the dream sequence stuff really stands out, and although it was a little buggy for me (in terms of being able to interact with villages and chests), the optional stealth mission was as well. You've done a fantastic job with terrain in this regard, tying the gameplay into the story.
• The battle music has been really enjoyable.

So now lets talk a little about the problematic stuff:

• The most important note that I have is that your weapons do not feel distinct. In base fire emblem, not only is there the whole weapon triangle deal, but because they use weapon durability, the costs of the various weapons are a huge part of their design. Axes are cheap, swords are expensive, and it makes it a large strain on your finances to be training multiple low-tier sword units. Because the defenses of sword units are the strongest option lategame (evasion), this is a tradeoff that gives some fantastic "more difficult now but pays off later" sorts of play patterns. When your weapons don't feel distinct, your character and class choices matter less, and that doesn't feel great as a player.
  
  Right now, only your magic and your knives feel distinct. Magic is the ultimate long-range option, but it also has unique defenses to deal with.  And knives have a good niche as a debuffing specializaiton. I'm gonna hold off talking about bows until I see how the cupid bow performs on the highest difficulty.
  
  The solution to this has to lie in your skills system, which is based on the unit, the class, and the items. Skills on items, in addition to your class skills, let you make weapon types matter without opening up the can of worms that is weapon durability. Its a real cost to use a weapon for its skill, particularly if the stats are middling. For swords, I'd think of something like a low base crit sword that makes your crits ignore armor, a low power sword that gives you evasion (10 or 15 or so), and a high power high crit sword with negative accuracy. The sword niche I outlined there is powerful with high investment, but relatively weak until you get there. Put vantage on a lance. Put a max health aura on an axe. Remember that particularly for combat skills (as opposed to utility ones), its a real opportunity cost to be using them, so you can make some really interesting stuff.
  
• The skill activation noise is a bit jarring. It's a much more abrasive sound than I'd expect, and if I'm feeling twitchy it makes me want to turn off sound effects altogether.
  
• Steal is comically overpowered. If we look at fire emblem to see what tools they used to balance it, there are a number of safety mechanisms that you just don't have in the game right now. Sometimes they'd make it so equipped items can't be stolen, they'd frequently have a weight vs str mechanic that made it very difficult to steal specific things (namely siege tomes). They'd also lock important items so that even with finagling you can't steal them at all. In addition, the fact that here you can swap stuff back like a trade makes it very easy to infinite grind xp, which in turn makes axe users the easiest to train after you get the steal axe. It did not feel right that when the black knight was a map boss I could steal his lance.
  
  I don't know what the solution is here, but everything from giving units a weaponless attack, implementing some of those safety features, being more careful about what weapons you give a steal-happy player should be looked at. Infinite use siege tomes on flying spellcasters trivializes any content, and you can get a lot of siege tomes. 
  
• Speaking of infinite siege tomes, magic defenses are a problem. Specifically the lack of them, and the all-or-nothing nature of their limited existence. They need to be on class skills so that they can't just be stolen off, and there needs to be more enemies that can punish long-ranged attack strategies (though do remember I've only seen through ch19). Having some "takes half damage from magic" class skills floating around would improve things a lot. If a boss has a magic guard, your siege tome comp can just kill everything around them, then haste in a thief to take it off them, then one-round them anyways. Also the text on magic guard item says take half damage, but in practice it gives a skill that means you take no damage from magic. All of this is less of a problem when access to siege tomes is more tightly controlled, or if levels are designed to have adequate countermeasures against them.

All that to say I really enjoy what you all have been working on. Steal is a notoriously difficult mechanic to balance properly, and this is still in the early stages of things. The stuff that's really hard to fix if you don't have it right is pretty much all there. The highlight by far is the tutorials and how smooth they've felt, so I think that you're on the right track as a more accessible fire emblem clone.

I can't progress past chapter 19. I can't get the seize command showing up for the last castle. Replayed the level a few times to try various timings on the event triggers, and still can't find a way through.