King Calamity

I always figured the classic rapier-wielding lord suited Eliwood perfectly. He's an ideal noble who doesn't like fighting, so he uses a fine weapon exclusive to nobles. But this actually got me thinking a bit: Eliwood's stats are kind of like a pegasus knight, with good resistance, luck, and skill. So he could have been given a lance, and been sort of like a male pegasus knight (no pegasus though, since they come from Ilia). He wouldn't fight like Ephraim, since they're pretty different characters, but maybe he could start off with a horse and be the only lord who's mounted before promotion.

I actually think Chrom is more like Hector than any of the other lords. He's brash and irresponsible, and doesn't feel suited to life as a noble at all. He inherits power early when an older sibling dies suddenly, and has a hard time dealing with it. He fights a lot like Hector too. When it comes to Chrom not being a very good king, I think that's just the result of the main story being really skimpy in Awakening, so it doesn't take as much time to justify some of these things as it probably should.

Let's just see what happens if I pretend to know what I'm doing...

I like a lot of the romantic supports with the future kids. Awakening's supports are weird in that to accommodate both the unlimited supports and the future kids, every relationship has to be platonic up to an A support, then go straight to marriage for S (Imagine if Hector and Florina's support was like that...). Anyway, since the future kids don't have their own continuous stream of future kids, theirs don't have to end that way, so they tend to feel more natural. I particularly like Owain and Severa's, where she just crushes him and then feels rotten about it. I also really like Tharja and Donnel's, where he doesn't question a thing she says or does, no matter how suspect it seems. Lon'qu and Maribelle was good, and I was also surprised how much I liked his supports with Lissa. And while I haven't finished Henry and Olivia's support yet, I know from the first one that it's great, as is Henry and Sumia's. As for non-romantic supports, I love Owain and Morgan's, and always find myself using Chrom and Vaike's.

GUARANTEEED TO BLOW YOUR MIIIIND... ANYTIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!

Dar? Like the Beastmaster? Well, Beastmaster or no, welcome. Also, for other Fire Emblem games, while I'd love to scream "PLAY BLAZING SWORD" from the mountaintops until the entire world takes heed, Sacred Stones is probably the best starting point, depending on how easy you found the game. It's the only other one in the series where you can stop and grind for experience if you get stuck.

Well, if you're trying to challenge yourself, I pretty much consider it a slight handicap to pair Chrom with anyone other than Sumia. It's just so great being able to move Chrom all over the place, plus his bonuses seem to help Sumia a lot when you first get her, and they build support points really fast. I just find them really easy to use together.

If by promote early you mean promote around level 10, I almost never do that. Even with healers, I find it easy to get by without them being able to fight for a while. If you mean promoting before level 20, in 6 and 7 I do that all the time, since I figure they probably won't make it to promoted level 20 anyway, so that's the point where I don't feel like I'm wasting level ups. In Sacred Stones, I never do that, because well, the Tower of Valni is right there.

Cat People? Or, like, Cat People? Sorry, I'm just a bit confused.

Magic units add a second type of damage, giving you a good way to harm units with high defense. Fliers can get just about anywhere fast, and are a good way to throw the player for a loop just when they get a good defensive position. If yo're going to take them out of the game, you should think of all the reasons they're there in the first place, so you can compensate for it when they're gone. There's also the issue of how to promote healers (unless you actually want them to be purely support units, like dancers or bards.) I'm also unsure of the idea of removing most magic for the sake of realism if you're keeping healing magic, which I see as the most detrimental to a realistic setting. If it were me, I'd keep magic and fliers, but make them very uncommon, maybe even going so far as to make a class exclusive to one character. This could even give the game a neat classical feel, like a folk tale or epic: Magic is feared and mysterious, wyverns and pegasi are legendary creatures few people have even seen.

Tharja, but my favorite turned out to be Maribelle, which I should have known the moment I saw her using words like "repobate." I really like Lucina, but having seen her as a baby has kept me from marrying her. But if you consider that it's an alternate timeline... And my first female avatar married Chrom. That man is an Adonis.

"Oh hey, this guy is like Lucius. I shall now heap resentment on him for inviting comparisons to one of my favorite characters and coming up short." Actually kind of like him now, but he's no Lucius. I also find it weird how built he is for someone routinely mistaken for a woman.

I don't really like the tactician in FE7 either, but I'd actually go the other way with it. The game's story works perfectly fine without the tactician (with the minor exception of the very beginning of Lyn's journey) and I always kind of find myself just wishing he (I?) wasn't there. I actually kind of like silent protagonists, but they work better in games with smaller casts, where there isn't so much telling the story through dialogue. I do like the avatar in Awakening, but that story is made with him/her in mind. Introducing a similar character to FE7 would mean either messing with the story to accommodate them, or just making their minor role in the story all the more glaring. Although... Yeah, not even going to try to deny this. Lyn is awesome. On a side note, I actually think the idea for the player character in Dream of Five is kind of genius, where the player is the person telling the story.

Oh wow, that thing is huge. Thanks, that should be a big help, so I'll resist my urge to ramble about how Sacred Stones is fundamentally different from other Fire Emblem games. Oh I don't know, you have a Yuyuko avatar and matching name, so I think we can make this work. Don't worry, I spend very little time seeking misguided revenge for my dead family, mostly because my family isn't dead.