Triangle Strategy

I'm about to start this game, I've heard there are multiple choices, is there any choice you make at the start that will lock you out of content? What's the optimal route?

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WORDS AND WORDS AND WORDS AND WORDS, the first parts are just exposition dump after exposition dump and you lose interest in the little gameplay you actually get.

Just look up a guide if you want the golden ending on your first playthrough, I think the first necessary choice is maybe 1/3 or 1/4th into the game, not at the beginning though. But you need to make like 4 important nonobvious choices and guessing them blind is almost impossible.

Choices just make you go to different chapters, and all routes are the same length.
The first choice against the scales in the game has no bearing on the overall plot but determines which character you recruit. If you go to Aesfrost you get an Archer while on Hyzante you get an Ice Mage. I'd definitely recommend getting the mage first and the archer later in NG+.
There's a "golden" route which has an extra recruitable character and requires specific choices at some points.

>But you need to make like 4 important nonobvious choices and guessing them blind is almost impossible.
The only one that isn't obvious is returning to Wolffort after chapter 15, the other ones are pretty standard choices.

There are some choices that'll lead directly to sequelbait, which we'll probably see in Rhombus Extrapolative, but you won't need to worry about that until after you beat it.

yes words are a part of life, brainlet

Other choices don't matter?

don't use any of the oil traps when you're defending your village...although for me this was a tall order on Hard in regular NG, eventually I caved and just waited to do this one on NG+

Depends on what you mean by "matter".
Choices during dialog just influence which of your stats gets raised, you need specific higher ones to convince people to support your choices during the scales voting.
Choices made during the scales determine what route you'll go on during the next few chapters. These can be radically different between each other. If you mean specifically for the endings, aside from the golden route which has previous checks, the ending you get is chosen in the final scales voting.

Getting the Gold Route on your first playthrough is nearly impossible without a guide, and the Gold Route also has extra chapters.
Most the choices you make just effect the party members you get, and where you fight, but there's a high likelihood you'll lock yourself out of the Gold Route early on.

Which stat is the better one overall?

not him i picked randomly during the exploration phases and trial and errored the dialogs when you have to convince people. The most important parts of the game not to get bricked is to have the flying unit in Wolffor and get rid of ranged units to kthen ill all melee units from afar that mission is super hard otherwise also once you do the choice that sets the golden route you have to divide your forces and do 3 separate scenarios the first 2 are super hard with gimped line ups the last one is way easier so keep that in mind

So it's not like I should try to keep them balanced?

>Nearly impossible without a guide
What? Most of the steps are straight forward shit and the only one you could possibly mess up is the final route split. I got it on my first playthrough without trying.

The only one where you actually need a competent team is the 2nd stage. The first one is a kiting map and the last one is a freebie as long as you put at least two decent units to go with the forced character.

>The only one where you actually need a competent team is the 2nd stage.
to me the first one was hard too i had to replay it like 5 times until i got to kill all the mages and ranged units.

For the second one I just had Anna cheese it by doing the Attack -> Invisible strat over and over to kill the healers first then eventually kill the boss.

Does that even work? the units come after you after some time

If Anna's the only unit alive, they won't do anything if she's invisible.
So I deployed normally, had everyone try to kill as many enemies as possible before they were wiped out, then had Anna slowly pick up the stragglers.

There are a few plot points that NEED to happen and the plot will funnel the routes back together to make sure they happen, and the plot is roughly divided into 3 arcs. Within those arcs there's quite a lot of differences though. Don't worry about golden routes and all that shit, just make the choices that feel right. If you pander to the character's motivations/personalities you can generally get them to vote on whatever you feel like. The other endings are much more interesting and you'll get more narrative fulfillment from them, the golden route is bland.

The biggest thing you need to know going in is that there is a SHITLOAD of exposition and the main character never gets interesting. The main 3 retainers (Benedict, Roland, and Frederica) do get interesting, but Serenoa himself is boring. Benedict in particular is really convincingly written as 'the smart guy'.

Here's a quick rundown of the main character's personalities for rigging their votes:

Benedict: Never appeal to his emotions, stick to brutal pragmatism. The one exception is that he's fiercely defensive of House Wolffort's lands and won't act pragmatically if it involves fucking House Wolffort over, this comes up more towards the end of the game.
Roland: Always pick moral/honourable options. Roland has a martyr complex, so if an option shits on him, pick that instead.
Frederica: Pick options that suggest your choice would step on as few toes as possible. Unless the pinkjews are involved.
Anna: No spine, she'll do whatever she wants. She's predictably a frigid bitch so don't appeal to her emotions either.
Erador: Easily swayed by emotional appeals, just pick honourable options.
Hughette: Argue your choice is in Roland's best interests and she'll cave. If your choice fucks him over she's hard to sway.
Geela: Pragmatic like Benedict, but keep in mind she's scared of the holy state and shies away from acting against them.

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I want to like this game but getting stuck doing retarded things because you can't convince the retards on your team to do what you want killed my motivation for continuing this game.